Jos Buttler wins the toss and, unusually, wants to bat first. “It looks,” says Rohit Sharma, “like a typical Indian pitch.”. Morning everyone and welcome to the second game in the ODI series. This is it, the crunch. If England lose again, another series will be gone. If they win, it’ll be 1-1 and they may even go into the third and final game with a modicum of momentum. The good news is that this match is taking place at Cuttack, which is traditionally full of runs. The bad news is that India lose only one game in four here: last time England were in town, eight years ago, they made 366 and still lost. The neither good nor bad news is that Cuttack hasn’t hosted an ODI for five years, so it may have changed its ways.
India, as usual, are hot favourites. They are so good at white-ball cricket that they can even get away with recalling their big names. Today, Virat Kohli is due back after missing the first ODI with a bad knee. It’s the kind of thing that can happen when you’re 36 and you’ve got 550 international games on the clock. The first ball is due to be bowled at 1.30pm in Cuttack, which is 8am in London. I’ll be back about 25 minutes before that with the toss, the teams and possibly some toast.
