England and India occupy the top two spots respectively in ICC Men’s ODI Rankings. Both the teams are favorites for winning the World Cup this time and have been in excellent form in the recent time. Beating the English team, who are in pursuit of their first ever World Cup and have the advantage of the home soil is one of the toughest challenges for the Indian side, which is looking for their third World Cup. According to the World Cup schedule, the teams will meet on 30 June 2019 in Edgbaston.
England has demonstrated their batting prowess with mammoth scores in the recently concluded series with Pakistan. With batsmen like Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler, Jason Roy, and Eoin Morgan, this side reminds one of the Australian batting line up of the late 90s and early 2000s.
The Indian pace trio of Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar, and Shami, one of the best in the tournament, will have a challenging task at their hands to restrict the English batsmen to a low total. The conditions in England at this time of the year are no less than a paradise for the batsmen. It will be crucial for the bowlers to exploit the overcast and windy conditions to their best and try to outsmart the batting side with swing and pace, which is the USP of this trio.
Indian batsmen seem to have a slight edge over the English bowlers as the latter have not been very impressive in the middle and death overs. The star-studded Indian batting lineup with the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, and MS Dhoni will be looking forward to making the best of batsmen-friendly conditions on the English soil. Bowlers like Jofra Archer and Sam Woakes will be looking forward to creating some problems for the Indian side, especially Archer, who is a left arm bowler with quite a lot of pace and ball swinging abilities.
Both the team have great all-rounders in Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja for India and Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali for England. All in all, the match between these two sides will be highly competitive and the Indian side will have to be on the top of their game to beat England. Any slip can be costly and will have a huge impact on the world cup points table directly.
