England ready to swing

LONDON, July 16: Sparring time is over. Now, as the think-tanks of both India and England draw their gameplans for the first Test at Lord's, Andrew Strauss dropped a hint at how exactly the hosts plan to deal with the strong Indian batting line-up.
"We always expect Indian batting to be very strong, there's no doubt about that," stressed Strauss. "But it's one thing for these Indian batsmen to be batting at home and another to do it away.We will try and exploit any weakness they have away from home."
To try and collect as much information as they possibly could, the England's think-tank specially assigned their TV analyst to shoot the entire proceedings of India's last warm-up match in Chelmsford, which concluded on Sunday.
"We've got our plans in place," the left-hand opener added.
The forecast for the Lord's Test does make it a real possibility for the Indian batsmen to be battling under heavy weather. "We should be able to exploit any swing conditions at Lord's and apply pressure." The Indian openers, Dinesh Karthik and Wasim Jaffer, could well heed the advice of former England skipper Graham Gooch.
"Against the swinging ball you have to play late, you don't commit too early," was what Gooch told them on Sunday.
Despite the possibility of Steve Harmison being ruled out due to injury, England still have enough teeth in their bowling attack to test the heavyweights in the Indian batting. Ryan Sidebottom and Matthew Hoggard, along with Monty Panesar, are sure to take their places in the XI, leaving James Anderson and Stuart Broad to fight it out for the last bowling spot.
"There's no Andrew Flintoff so there's more responsibility on our batting," said Strauss.