Moores - Confidence is high

Coach backing England to come good in India

Last updated: 13th November 2008   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Moores - Confidence is high

Moores: optimistic mood

We're very confident as a one-day team, we have a clear formula of how we're going to play and we want to go and test it out in different conditions in India.

Peter Moores
Quotes of the week

India v England, 1st ODI
Rajkot, Nov 14
Live on Sky Sports 1 from 3.30am, you can also follow the action with skysports.com's over-by-over commentary

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England coach Peter Moores insists confidence is high ahead of the one-day series in India.

Despite losing their final warm-up match against a Mumbai Cricket Association XI on Tuesday by 124 runs, Moores feels his side are well prepared for Friday's series opener in Rajkot.

England won their last one-day series 4-0 against South Africa at the end of the domestic summer but went off the boil during the disastrous trip to Antigua for the Stanford Series.

India come into the series in good form, albeit in the Test arena, after humbling Australia 2-0 in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series.

"India will be very buoyant and very up, but will they be able to get down quick enough to be able to deliver in Friday's game?" said Moores, whose side are aiming to become the first England team to win a series in India since 1984-85.

"There is also quite a big turnover in personnel and they have quite a few different players coming in.

Advantage

"They've got the advantage there of top-flight players coming out of a tough series, so they're in that mode.

"But we've got the advantage that we're fresh and I think, though Tuesday was disappointing, it's not going to knock our confidence as a team.

"We're very confident as a one-day team, we have a clear formula of how we're going to play and we want to go and test it out in different conditions in India."

India have decided to rest Sachin Tendulkar for the first three matches of the series, while key seamer Ishant Sharma - who won man-of-the-series against Australia - is out of the first one-day international due to an ankle injury.

England made two changes to their starting line-up from the side that lost the $20 million Stanford showdown, James Anderson and Ravi Bopara earning recalls at the expense of Graeme Swann and Luke Wright.

Stuart Broad will take his place in the starting XI after passing a fitness test on his sore knee.