Rain washes out India vs England final test match

London: England’s desire of washing India’s hopes of winning the last test match were rained out at Oval on the very first day.

After winning the toss by England captain, Andrew Strauss & elected to bat first. They scored 75 for no loss till the lunch. But after lunch the rain started to pour & the match could not get started at its scheduled time. Strauss was 38 not out & his left handed fellow partner Alastair Cook on 34 not out. England is already advance by 3-0 from India in the test series. They won the last test match by an inning & 242 runs at Edgebaston & replaced India from the top position of the test teams table in ICC ranking.

England’s most concerning moment of the morning came when Strauss, on 24, bailed out of a pull shot against an Ishant Sharma bouncer and saw the ball crash into his helmet, breaking a piece of the peak. But after the replacement of the helmet, Strauss started to play & didn’t face any kind of problem against the Indian attack.

But before the toss India got another shock when their star medium pacer, Praveen Kumar, who is one of the success stories in this series, got ruled out of the game. He was not in the team because of his thumb injury in the third test match. But during the tea time, a statement issued by the Indian team that Praveen is not playing in the last test match because of his left ankle injury. He was replaced in the series by RP Singh.

Alastair Cook who scored shinning 294 in the Edgbaston test match played a square-cut Singh for four & Strauss on-drove to a S Srishanth delivery. Though England won the second & third test matches in four by playing four days, this time also they are looking for something huge.

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