Battered England suffer yet another humiliation

Kevin Pietersen shrugged off the batting calamities in Antigua and Mumbai which saw his side dismissed for 99 and 98 respectively in matches against the Stanford Superstars and a club second XI. And now he has heaped praise on the opposition following India's stunning 158-run victory in today's opening limited-overs international at Rajkot.

But with six more games to come, the next on Monday, England need to stop the rot or risk being routed by a team brimming with talent and sky high on confidence after their emphatic Test series victory over Australia.

Pietersen was right to speak in glowing terms about a sensational, unbeaten innings of 138 from Yuvraj Singh, which carried India to the record-breaking heights of 387 for five. Facing just 78 balls, Yuvraj struck 16 fours and six soaring sixes to make sure that a big total turned into the highest conceded by England in a one-dayer.

And but for a flurry of late sixes from Ravi Bopara, Pietersen's team would also have suffered their heaviest defeat, in run-terms, instead of limiting the damage to landslide proportions.

But neither Yuvraj's brilliance nor the narrow avoidance of complete and utter embarrassment should prevent captain Pietersen and coach Peter Moores from reading the riot act and making changes for the next match, in Indore.

Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison, rather than Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, may need to share the new ball on flat subcontinent pitches if England are to have any hope of taking early wickets.

Graeme Swann, who is supposed to be England's senior spinner, surely has to play rather than carrying the drinks as he did today. And, when it comes to the batting line-up, the tourists must somehow get more oomph at the top of the order than Ian Bell, Matt Prior and Owais Shah are able to supply.

Mind you, even if all those problems are solved, England could still struggle to compete with a rampant India.

Pietersen's decision to bowl first seemed fair enough, given a grassy pitch and moist early-morning conditions. But Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag made a nonsense of that theory by nipping out of the blocks and then clicking into top gear in an opening stand of 127 in 20 overs.

The game was almost up for England there and then. But when both fell to Samit Patel in quick succession, Suresh Raina, Mahendra Dhoni and, most of all, Yuvraj put England to the sword.

Incredibly, 101 of Yuvraj's runs came after he had complained of a bad back and been allowed a runner. Nothing, though, was going to stop him from recording the fastest one-day century against England (64 balls) but at least the batsman who hammered six sixes in an over off Broad during last year's Twenty20 World Cup handed out the punishment evenly today.

England needed a miracle even to make a game of it. Instead, they slumped to 38 for four against the pace of Zaheer Khan and Munaf Patel and another sub-100 total seemed likely.

At least Pietersen showed some decent form after three failures. But, having reached 63, he was run out by Bopara's bad call for a single.

Harmison did not even manage to face a ball before he, too, failed to make his ground and only Bopara's what-the-heck hitting lifted the total to 229 before England were dismissed.