Paul Collingwood chose to bat first on an Oval pitch that looked good for batting but might dry out a bit as the game wears on and bring the slower bowlers into play.
Rahul Dravid conceded he too would have liked to bat first but hoped his spinners could do the job first up.
There were two changes to the England team. Dimitri Mascarenhas, who cracked a half-century early on in the series, recovered from a minor injury to his hand and returned to the playing XI. Jon Lewis was the one to miss out, while Luke Wright has been handed his ODI debut. Wright has had a fabulous run with Sus*** all season, and took the Indian bowling attack apart in the warm-up ODI when he played for the England Lions.
India made just one change to their team, giving Robin Uthappa his first match of the series in place of Dinesh Karthik. After a good Test series, Karthik failed to make a strong impression in the ODIs where, sent in to bat at No. 3, he did not quite get going.
But there's no respite whatsoever for the Indians. They have been playing catch-up all throughout, and need a win to stay alive in the series. Dravid has had his share of luck with the toss but this one went Collingwood's way and, on a good batting surface, India need to bowl well against an England batting line-up that has depth.
Teams
England 1 Alastair Cook, 2 Matt Prior (wk), 3 Ian Bell, 4 Kevin Pietersen, 5 Paul Collingwood (capt), 6 Owais Shah, 7 Luke Wright, 8 Dimitri Mascarenhas, 9 Stuart Broad, 10 Monty Panesar, 11 James Anderson.
India 1 Sourav Ganguly, 2 Sachin Tendulkar, 3 Gautam Gambhir, 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 Rahul Dravid (capt), 6 Robin Uthappa, 7 Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), 8 Ajit Agarkar, 9 Piyush Chawla, 10 Ramesh Powar, 11 Zaheer Khan.
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