'We are striving hard to overtake India as number one cricket team,' says Swann

Calcutta News.Net
Wednesday 20th July, 2011

England off-spinner Graeme Swann has said that his team is striving hard to overtake India as the number one ranked team in the world.

"It is going to be a huge game, it feels like summer has finally arrived, at least today the sun has come out for 20 minutes. We are playing against the number one team in the world, we are striving to be the number one team in the world, so it is a very exciting time for us," Swann to a press conference at the Lord's Cricket Ground here on Tuesday, two days before the first of four India-England Tests.

Swann insisted that England's main focus was to win the series and hoped that Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar would take another six to seven months to reach his 100th international century.

"He is a phenomenal talent to still be going now and on the verge of a potential 100th 100 in international games. Hopefully he will have to wait six or seven months for that because we do not want him getting one in England," said Swann.

He further criticised the International Cricket Council's (ICC) decision not to include the Hawk Eye ball tracking technology as part of its mandatory Decision Review System (DRS).

"It would be nice if we were using it obviously, in my opinion it has been a great introduction to Test cricket over the last two or three years and it works, but so be it, I believe the powers that be have decided we are only using it for I believe caught behinds," said Swann.

Andrew Strauss led England side have a settled look, with the only probable question mark for the captain and coach Andy Flower being the choice between seam bowlers Stuart Broad and Tim Bresnan.

Chris Tremlett and James Anderson are expected to lead the pace attack in what will be an interesting challenge between India's talented batting line-up and England's form bowlers.

"Test cricket is always a big challenge, we know they have some very good players and we have been bowling pretty well over the last six months. It is obviously a challenge for us and we are just going to keep doing the simple things right and hopefully go from there," said Tremlett.

He further said that England will be looking for wickets with bounce and carry to exploit their tall bowlers against batsmen more used to subdued subcontinent pitches.

"It can sometimes depend on the conditions, you saw at the Rose Bowl we had a slightly friendlier surface with a bit of bounce to the wicket and I think we used that to our advantage. Obviously it depends on the conditions put in front of us but we will assess our plans on conditions and things but certainly it is always a weapon the short stuff as well," he said.

The first match of the series starts on Thursday (July 21) at Lord's and will be the 2000th Test match in history and the 100th between the two countries.

England are coming off a 1-0 home series win over Sri Lanka following a 3-1 win in Australia last winter and know that a victory margin of two tests or more in the four-game series will see them installed as the highest ranked team in the world. By Praful Kumar Singh (ANI)

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