Trescothick's valiant effort in vain

Twenty-four hours ago, this man was hit by a 'stomach bug' and was unsure of taking the field for the first one-dayer against India.

On Saturday, after V V S Laxman dropped him on two, Marcus Trescothick played a brutish innings scoring 121 runs before a crowd of 100,000 in the humid conditions of Kolkata.

It took an error of judgment from the umpire to end Marcus Trescothick's masterly knock at the Eden Gardens and with it England's hopes of winning the opening ODI.

Finally, they fell short by 22 runs with five overs to spare.

This is the second time that Trescothick has scored a hundred and still ended on the losing side. Last year, he scored his maiden hundred at the Lords against Pakistan and yet ended up on the losing side.

India walked away with quite a few positives from this game. Dinesh Mongia and Hemang Badani's return to the one-day fold showcased the riches in batting India possesses.

Mongia's shot-selection and Badani's never-say-die attitude give the solidity to an Indian side dominated by flamboyant stroke makers.

Ajay Ratra, though not entirely flawless, did a tidy job behind the wickets and was far better than Deep Das Gupta. Hopefully, India's year long search for a wicket keeper might end with Ratra.

However, one glaring shortcoming was the number of dot balls during the Indian innings - 164 off a minimum of 300 balls.

The first ten overs had a total of 41 dot balls, with a mere eight singles with the score reading 51 for no loss.

It explains the reason for Indian coach John Wright's emphasis on rotating the strike and taking singles. If that were to happen, totals of 350 plus would be a regular feature with this talented squad.

With this win, India has for the first time won four matches in a row against England.

Before this match, India twice beat England at Sharjah in April 1999 and during a World Cup match in May 1999 at Birmingham.

INDIAN INNINGS

India did two right things in the morning.

Skipper Sourav Ganguly won the toss and opted to bat on a wicket, which ground committee chairman Shivaji Banerjee said was, ideal for one-dayers with lots of runs in it.

Despite the cracks on the square, which seemed to have a pattern, conditions were right for batting first and scoring in addition of 275.

Secondly, Sourav Ganguly coming out to open the innings with Sachin Tendulkar put paid to England's hopes that Ganguly, struggling for form, would drop himself down the order.

The two men have an enviable opening record in ODIs with seventeen thousand runs between them.

Add to that the magnificence of the Eden Gardens with the maddening surround sound and their top batsman Graham Thorpe taking ill on the eve of the one-dayer, England truly started the game overwhelmed.

Their only chance really was to dismiss Sachin and Sourav early and put pressure on the relatively inexperienced middle-order - Laxman (29 ODIs), Dinesh Mongia (5), Hemang Badani (23) and Virendra Sehwag (22).

India went in with six specialist batsmen and four bowlers though they must have been tempted to take the bits-n-pieces player Sanjay Bangar instead of the left-handed Dinesh Mongia who had a good run in the recently concluded Challenger Series in Bangalore.

India made very sedate start despite the Yorkshire-men attack of Matthew Hoggard and Darren Gough taking a while to get the right line and length to bowl to the left-right hand combine of Ganguly-Tendulkar.

Gough managed to keep Sachin quiet giving him just six runs off the 14 deliveries he bowled to him.

Soon enough, the latter ran out of patience and played a short arm pull off Hoggard to the mid-wicket fence.

Ganguly too got going when he found the fence with a pull off Gough reminding sceptics of his ODI record.

In the last ODI series in South Africa, Ganguly had amassed 380 runs in six innings with two hundreds and a fifty at an average of 63.

India got to the fifty in the tenth over.

At 78/0, the Indian openers seemed set for yet another big opening stand and the Englishmen doomed to suffer Ganguly's pre-match warning of 'an astonishing experience' in the world's biggest cricket stadium.

However, Sachin was castled off the last ball of the 15th over trying to swing at a full-length in-swinger from Flintoff. He made 36 off 41 deliveries.

Dinesh Mongia walked in to bat ahead of Laxman and was welcomed back into international cricket with a bouncer from Flintoff.

Ganguly was looking for a good outing in the middle. But three overs later, he went for a pre-meditated shot over the wide spaces on the leg-side and holed out to Nasser Hussain at square leg. He scored 42.

Flintoff bagged this wicket too.

With India at 95/2, England seemed to be coming back into the match before the Laxman and Mongia partnership dispelled all fears of the famous Indian collapse.

After an uncertain start, Mongia began timing his shots and kept the scoreboard moving at a frenetic pace. The most outstanding shot from his bat was the slog-sweep off Giles, which sent the ball into the noisy stands.

With a run-a-ball fifty run partnership, Mongia scoring 37 of them, India at 149/2 was coasting towards the 300-run mark with 22 overs yet to be bowled.

Fiddling with his field and his bowlers with an uneasy randomness, Hussain finally called right when he got Gough back into the attack. He got V V S Laxman to flick the cherry straight to leg into Collingwood's hands.

Gough could have struck again had Hussain placed a slip for new-man Sehwag. Jamie Foster's dive was not good enough.

Sehwag's only conceivable weakness, to balls outside the off-stump, was exposed by the experienced Gough. Sehwag got another life when Knight dived full stretch but failed to take a clean catch in the deep.

An unruffled Sehwag continued to play his shots bisecting the field with precision through to the fence applying the same method Mongia did at the other end. Mongia reached his maiden 50 in ODIs off 50 balls.

Sehwag continued with the trend of the day when, after getting off to a good start, he carelessly gave it away trying to pull Hoggard and was castled for a brisk 29.

India, at that stage, were 139/4 in 37.4 overs.

With 71 runs being scored off the combined 10 overs of Ashley Giles, Paul Collingwood and Vaughan, England's problems were not yet over.

The fall of Mongia in the 43rd over lead to a mini-collapse with three wickets falling in the space of eight deliveries with the addition of just 10 runs.

The 75-ball 71 from Mongia was the highlight of the Indian innings and though his batting isn't as flamboyant as that of some of his team mates, this Punjab lad, with his deft placement and flawless temperament, is a player for the future.

Badani, along with Harbhajan, kept the momentum of the innings alive with slashes and heaves, which pushed India's total to 281.

Useful contributions from the batsmen and some good partnerships helped India put up the highest score ever against the Englishmen.

India though had never successfully defended their total in India against England losing in all six encounters held before this one.

ENGLAND INNINGS

India struck first blood when Javagal Srinath trapped opener Nick Knight in front for a duck off the first ball he faced.

However, the 1/1 scoreboard did not perturb Trescothick who played his shots with amazing alacrity.

And Agarkar even found the edge of his bat, only for Laxman at second slip to mess up the chance.

V V S Laxman's dearth of big scores seems to have rubbed off onto his fielding too, and he dropped Hussain as well off Srinath when the English skipper was on 19.

Considering that Laxman was the top catcher for India in Tests in 2001 with 17 catches along with S S Das, the missed chances were startling.

At 64/2, Ganguly brought on Kumble in the twelfth over and the leggie reposed his captain's faith trapping Hussain in front for 25. The decision seemed to be debatable because Hussain was a long way down the track.

The Hussain-Trescothick partnership at one stage scored 40 runs in four overs.

Harbhajan was subjected to some special treatment by the Somerset opener.

He slogged one off the bottom edge to fine leg, then followed it up with a six over long-on and drove the offie through extra-cover; adding 30 in three overs with Vaughan.

Vaughan departed soon after playing against the turn and mistiming his shot, lofting one from Kumble straight up for Agarkar to take a catch running in from mid-on to mid-off. He scored 14.

In the 26th over, Trescothick reached his century in 80 balls, the fastest by an Englishman in one-dayers, and England was on course for an upset win.

Along with Paul Collingwood, Trescothick put on 105 for the fourth wicket before Collingwood (21) spooned one to Sachin Tendulkar at short mid-wicket off Ganguly.

With 98 runs required off 120 deliveries for an English win, the spectators started to head for the exit doors.

However, a dubious decision by umpire Sharma had Marcus Trescothick end his epic knock of 121 off 109 deliveries. The delivery from Srinath clearly missed the leg-stump by a few inches.

England completely lost it from there on losing wickets at regular intervals. They lost their last six wickets for a mere 35 runs.

It all came apart when Ashley Giles lofted Agarkar to Sourav Ganguly at mid-off with England needing 22 runs and six overs remaining.

Detailed Scorecard:
England Innings | Indian Innings

Images from the match | Statistical Highlights

England's tour of India : Complete coverage