NatWest Challenge: Off-colour England Fail to Climb Ganguly's Modest Mountain

There was no Andrew Flintoff at Lord's yesterday: no mighty axeman strokeplay, no bullish bowling or swallow-catching. There is an absence of sentiment in this England team now. Fail to pull your weight and that's it - out.

Only joshing of course. Flintoff was back at home awaiting the birth of his first child, and for once the team had to do without him. It would be nice to report that none of the capacity crowd noticed the difference. But his replacement Anthony McGrath made two runs and did not get a bowl, and in the final game of this three-match series England succumbed to a reshuffled and consequently rejuvenated Indian side by 23 runs. Even in his absence, the stock of the mighty Fred has risen.

It ought to have been an easy task for England to complete a clean sweep. Batting first on winning the toss, India had struggled their way to 204, a modest total reached almost exclusively through the endeavours of Sourav Ganguly, who made 90, with three sixes and five fours, and Rahul Dravid's 52 (three fours and the rest in singles for him), the pair adding 93 for the fourth wicket. The Indian captain's dismissal, a catch clipped to midwicket, precipitated a slide, with the last seven wickets falling for 63 in 82 balls.

Steve Harmison finished with four for 22, his best figures in any one-day match for England or Durham, to beat Harbhajan Singh - three for 28 yesterday to go with one for 14 in the previous game - in a close-run contest for a man-of-the-series award. Perhaps it should have gone to Steve Harbhajan to keep everyone happy. Not yet two years ago, in an Ashes warm-up game at Lilac Hill outside Perth, it seemed Harmison was conceding that number of runs in wides.

England's reply was full of intent but lacking substance on a pitch that had been used the previous day for the encounter between Australia and Pakistan, and as such was well read by the Indians, who loaded their side with spin. Inside nine overs they had lost all but Michael Vaughan of their top five, albeit to the pace and swing of the left-arm pair Ashish Nehra and Irfan Pathan.

When Paul Collingwood was brilliantly run out from short leg by Mohammed Kaif, and Geraint Jones, after smacking a six and a four, was superbly caught by Virender Sehwag at wide mid-on, the score stood at 62 for six and already the game seemed up.

The best sides, however, the ones with the real depth, are able to look not at how many runs have been scored and wickets lost but at what is required to win. At that stage, provided a partnership evolved, a rate of about five runs per over was well within compass. Vaughan, for the first time in one-day internationals this summer, looked in prime form, driving crisply from the first, and in Ashley Giles, his bosom buddy, he found an experienced and willing ally.

Together, with judicious strokeplay and careful placement, the pair added 92 in 145 balls, the required rate climbing but still in hand.

It was Harbhajan's tenth and final over that sealed England's fate. Perhaps, the batsmen might reflect, they might have been content to see him out of the attack, much as Flintoff had done at The Oval on Friday, and taken their chances from the rest. Giles prodded half-heartedly at the first ball of the over, however, and although impeded by the non-striker Harbhajan held the return catch and set off in jubilation.

Five balls later Vaughan advanced to his last delivery, which spun sharply and clipped a pad on the way down the leg side, from where the young wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik did well to gather the ball and demolish the wicket with the batsman still short of his crease. The England captain had hit eight fours and batted diligently for 141 balls to resurrect a position, only to relinquish it. After that the game was always India's.

If Harmison's pace and accuracy took the bowling honours for England, there was the chance for Darren Gough to take centre stage on what was surely his last international appearance at Lord's.

At The Oval he had been stuck on 199 one-day wickets for five overs, and was in his second spell yesterday when Harbhajan looped a gentle catch to backward point. It is more than 10 years since Alec Stewart caught Martin Crowe to give him his first wicket in his opening over and there have been a lot of tribulations in between, not least with injury, which has meant him missing 40 of 173 games played since his debut.

By global standards 200 wickets is small beer - 19th in a list topped by Wasim Akram with 502 - because of the amount of cricket played in other countries. For England, though, only Ian Botham, with 145, and Phil DeFreitas, with 115, have reached even three figures and deservedly Gough stands head, shoulders and torso above them.