England coast home in Kolkata warm-up

CricInfo

January 17, 2002

England made light of mediocre opponents in their one warm-up match before the six-match one-day series against India gets under way at Eden Gardens, Kolkata on Saturday.

England coasted to an eight-wicket win over a Bengal Cricket Association side which included just one Test player. After dismissing the BCA for 150, the tourists coasted to victory in only 25.1 overs.

After the match the England coach, Duncan Fletcher, again expressed concerns about England's lack of preparation going into an important one-day series.

"I've discussed it with Nasser and between us we feel pretty under-prepared for that first one-day international," Fletcher said. "We will struggle to catch up but that's enough of that now - we want to put that behind us and move on.

"We have a one-day series coming up which we're looking forward to. It is going to be tough but I think it's going to a good series and we have got some value out of today's game with certain performances."

England used all their 15-man squad as Darren Gough returned from his long break from cricket to take two for 11 while Andrew Caddick, who has not played since September, finished wicketless but looked threatening with the new ball.

Marcus Trescothick had a useful work-out as wicketkeeper for 18 overs, marking him down as a replacement should any misfortune befall James Foster. Trescothick made a straightforward stumping when Alokendu Lahiri charged down the pitch to Giles and then took a regulation catch as Soumen Singh edged Paul Collingwood.

"I thought he kept well," said Fletcher. "We wanted to give him a go and I thought it was nice the way he took the ball - he looked a natural behind the stumps having not kept wicket for some time.

"We wanted to use him in case anything happened to Foster on the morning of a match and we would feel pretty confident now of putting him in for a game."

As he did in India before Christmas, Trescothick has succumbed to a stomach bug which has affected several of his team-mates over the past week.

"He's had this bug for a couple of days now and it is a little bit of a concern," admitted Fletcher. "I've noticed with the other guys that after a couple of days off they still feel pretty weak but we're hopeful he'll be all right for Saturday."

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