Mumbai memory offers England hope
ESPNcricinfo previews the second Test between India and England in Mumbai
Match facts
November 23-27, 2012Start time 0930 local (0400 GMT)
Big Picture
India's victory in the opening Test in Ahmedabad went perfectly to plan. England capitulated against India's spinners, just as everybody suspected they might, and even Alastair Cook's wonderfully defiant hundred after England followed on had the air of a new Test captain merely delaying the inevitable.Form guide
India: WWWLL (Completed matches, most recent first)England: LLDLD
Players to watch
As Sidharth Monga has memorably observed elsewhere, Virender Sehwag would have liked nothing better than to move from 94 Tests to 100 with a six. Instead, he got there in scratchy fashion, with only one half-century in 10 knocks until his career-affirming hundred in Ahmedabad. No Test batsman performs more audaciously or with such an uncluttered method. Attention will be on him even more than usual.Pitch and conditions
Will the Test pitch last the course? Three weeks ago Mumbai played Railways on the same surface, encouragement for Sachin Tendulkar, who warmed up with a century, and even more so for India's spinners who can anticipate residual wear.Team news
Stats and trivia
- England have never lost more than eight Tests in a calendar year. Already this year they have lost seven - and they have three Tests to play.
- Panesar is expected to return to the scene of one of his greatest fielding escapades - in Mumbai six years ago, he badly missed MS Dhoni at long-off, the ball landing several yards away, before catching a similar opportunity in the same spot minutes later.
- England won in Mumbai in 2006 to the tune of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire", the dressing room song championed by the captain at the time, Andrew Flintoff.
- Harbhajan Singh's 22 wickets at the Wankhede have come at less than 20 runs each.
- In the last Test at the Wankhede - India v West Indies last November - the match finished as a draw with scores level, only the second such occasion in Test history.
Quotes
"If it does not turn I can come and criticise once again."MS Dhoni, India's captain, who criticised the Motera pitch for not turning from the outset, continues his campaign in Mumbai.
Alastair Cook, England's captain, makes the light of Broad's apparent siege mentality after another defeat on Asian pitches.
David Hopps is the UK editor of ESPNcricinfo