England suffer major injury blow ahead of 1st ODI

The England Women's Cricket team will be without their prolific top order bat Claire Taylor for the first one-day international against India at Chennai tomorrow. Taylor, who scored her maiden test century against Australia last summer (2001) at Headingley to add to her 50* in the One-Day International at Lord's, has suffered a serious injury to her right knee. England's reserve player, Jackie Hawker (Somerset), is preparing to fly to India should Taylor have to withdraw from the tour.

The injury means England will be unchanged for the match, with Caroline Atkins and Arran Thompson, who scored 65* in the warm-up game, again opening the innings, and Amanda Godliman from Sussex will make her full England debut at number 3.

England Captain Clare Connor admitted "losing Claire is a major blow for us. She's worked so hard, as have the rest of the squad, to prepare for this tour and she was in top form. But I have real confidence in this squad, and other batters, notably Arran, played so well in the warm up game that we have a lot to be positive about. We hope Claire can make a good recovery as quickly as possible".

England off-spinner Dawn Holden is looking forward to playing her first international match in India, "I've joined the squad from Australia where I've been playing for the past couple of months, and was delighted to take a couple of wickets yesterday. For a spinner, there's nowhere better to play than India and the early signs yesterday were that our bowling attack can cause real problems for the India batters here".

The ODI begins at 10am local time tomorrow (4.30am GMT).