India-England test match starts today at historical stadium, Lords

July 19: India-England test match at historical Lords begins today with Michael Vaughan winning the toss and opted to bat first in the first test here on Thursday.

•   E-mail Article
•   Printer Friendly
•   Text-Size    

Lords has been a historical ground as Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly and Andrew Strauss started their test career at this ground only.

Till yet India and England played 94 test matches out of which 34 matches have been won by England and 17 by India. But as far as match in Lords is concerned, it has been always a keen contest between the two foremost test playing nations.

England landed on the field with a new look of the team in view of the team facing the injury crisis with Monty Panesar the only experienced test-bowler in the team.

England’s fast bowlers Stephen Harmison, Andrew Flintoff, and Matthew Hoggard all are injured giving chance to Chris Tremlett, a Hampshire seamer and James Anderson. This is being considered a weak attack with inexperienced bowlers considering Indian strong batting line up.

Indian bowling on the other hand looks the same in the absence of experienced ones as R P Singh and Srisanth are not well aware of the English condition. However, Anil Kumble and Zaheer Khan will certainly try to cover up the patch.

When match started Indian cricket struggled for a single wicket till the 14th over until Saurav Ganguly gave a break-through by taking the wicket of Alistair Cook who got out when on 34.

Ganguly gave only seven runs with one maiden while Srisanth conceded 12 runs in his five-over spell with no wicket in his bag.

Till the news was written England scored 102runs in 20-overs at the loss of 1 wicket in the form Alistair Cook, and Michael Vaughan and Andrew Strauss at the crease.

Indian bowlers are struggling to get another wicket on the flat Lords pitch with only three seamers in the team.