India vs England, 2nd ODI Match Summary

The 2025 Champions Trophy is on the horizon and we are now witnessing the dress rehearsals taking place before the mega event as a few teams are playing up against each other in the sub-continent in the ODI format and gearing up for the challenge. This now brings us to the 2nd ODI between India and England at the Barabati Stadium in Cuttack as the hosts look to seal another white-ball series win against the English, who, themselves will be looking for redemption. It has been quite a torrid tour for England but if we look closely, then we can find that they simply haven't played the big moments well, resulting in some big losses and the coach Brendan McCullum will not be happy with it. England looked decent in the first 4 T20Is but had their shortcomings against the spin, however, that morale-deflating loss in the fifth T20I has certainly taken its toll and even after their best opening performance with the bat of the tour in the first ODI, they couldn't even manage a solid total on the board. Jos Buttler has certainly been the only consistent batter and young Jacob Bethell has looked the part as well but it is the highly-rated Harry Brook who is having a tour to forget even after a remarkable Test season and England really need him to fire or else it will become increasingly difficult for them in the Champions Trophy as well. On the flip side, India have had their batting woes as well with skipper Rohit Sharma still misfiring and Virat Kohli out injured for the first game and in doubt for the second one as well. Yashasvi Jaiswal couldn't do much on debut but the two ODI specialist batters, Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer both stood up to the challenge along with Axar Patel to get India over the line. Their bowling looks pretty solid and Harshit Rana picked up three wickets on debut after receiving some tap early in his spell and not just that but India are spoilt for choices in the spin department and we might even see Varun Chakravarthy being given a go in the ODI format. The last time these two teams met in and ODI at the Barabati Stadium, something magical happened as the iconic duo of Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni pulled India out of the trenches with twin centuries before Jason Roy and Eoin Morgan nearly matched that, resulting in a close encounter with nearly 750 runs being scored and eventually, the hosts edged it by 15 runs. The weather is expected to be a bit warm and humid but it will cool down in the second innings and with fairly short boundaries and lightning-fast outfield, we could potentially see a pretty high-scoring encounter. Will England be able to hit their way out of trouble and level the series? Or will India seal yet another series win? Only time will tell.