Chester-Le-Street, Sep 3: India's quest for a morale-boosting victory was today dashed after persistent rain forced abandonment of their first cricket One-Dayer against England after the visitors found themselves in a comfortable position here today.
India had made 274 for seven, riding mainly on opening batsman Parthiv Patel's fluent 95, after being put into bat and had reduced England to 27 for two from 7.2 overs before the rain came and no further play was possible.
Twice it appeared the rain had relented and play after all would be possible as England, under revised targets, were first asked to make 224 from 32 overs and later 164 from 20 overs. On both occasions, rain came again to make the restart impossible.
The umpires finally called off the match at 5:30pm local time (10pm IST), two and half hours after rain stopped play.
It was a spirited performance from the visitors who missed Sachin Tendulkar at the start of the day and middle-order bat Rohit Sharma in the middle of their innings.
Both setbacks were on account of injuries as Tendulkar pulled out due to an inflamed right toe and Rohit had his right index finger jammed by a rising delivery from Stuart Broad in the 38th over of the Indian innings.
India began the defence of their competitive total in superb fashion with Praveen Kumar accounting for both the openers, skipper Alastair Cook (4) and Craig Kieswetter (6).
The two new ball bowlers, Praveen Kumar and Vinay Kumar, made run-making an arduous task for England batsmen who had made only 27 from 7.2 overs before rain chose to have the final say.
Both the sides now moved on to Southampton for the second game of the five-match ODI series on September 6. PTI
