England's shot at No .1

Stephen Brenkley looks at the times England have struggled to complete the job in Test series over the past couple of years and writes in the Independent that this time against India, it should be a different story.

On three of them, as it happened, their opponents merely delayed the inevitable, on the other, the series ended in a draw.

Today at Edgbaston, gloriously revamped at a cost of £32m, England will embark, riots notwithstanding, on their attempt to ensure that they are not deprived by India. Delay this time may prove costly. There is much to suggest that England can win the third Test to go 3-0 ahead, which will secure both the rubber and the No 1 place in the world Test rankings.

Rob Bagchi writes in the Guardian that Edgbaston would be a great place for England to reach top spot.

Lord's is more majestic, Trent Bridge more picturesque, Headingley had more comically lugubrious characters, one of them famously selling choc ices, and the ambience at a packed Old Trafford or The Oval can sometimes match its peak fervour, but Edgbaston, where the third Test is scheduled to begin this morning, has such a knack for producing a raucous atmosphere and dramatic matches that it is easy to understand why most England players cherish it as their favourite ground.

In the same paper, Mike Selvey also expects England to reach the summit. He says that though England lack the bowling firepower of the great Australian and West Indies teams which dominated cricket over the past three decades, they still have the muscle to be No. 1

The England side of the Andrews, Flower and Strauss, understand to the full not just their strengths but also their limitations. They bat well, brilliantly at times, but not so well or consistently that they could compete, in theory anyway, with the stellar nature of India's top order. But then they know that the lower-order batting, unmatched in the game at the moment, can compensate. This is not arrogance but the sort of trust in one another forged in places as disparate as Melbourne and the Bavarian Alps.

In the Daily Mail Nasser Hussain looks at the newcomers in this Test, Virender Sehwag and Ravi Bopara.