England will be trying out new things: Hussain

England cricket captain Nasser Hussain said his young team was fully aware of India's vulnerability in crunch situations and will be trying out new things to put the home team under pressure during the six-match ODI series beginning in Kolkata from January 19.

"India are a formidable side at home and have a lot of quality players, but they have gone to the finals and lost quite a few times. We will try out new things to put pressure on them," said Hussain.

"Of course there is no such thing as a final in this series. But the Indians have tended to collapse under pressure. One-day cricket is all about handling pressure and we have to work hard to create that pressure," he said.

The 33-year-old English captain however conceded that India will be a completely different team with the fanatical support they receive at home, but his rather inexperienced side was preparaed to face the challenges.

"We had a very good one-day series in Zimbabwe with a 5-0 result. I am confident of my team putting up a good show and we are looking forward to keep the good work going. We have to learn to adapt to these conditions and learn quickly," Hussain observed.

Hussain said although pacemen Andrew Caddick and Darren Gough had returned to the squad, there was still a lot of inexperience in the team.

"But the youngsters have shown a lot of promise and the right attitude. It augurs well for English cricket," he said.

"In Zimbabwe we played good cricket, But playing against India will be a much more difficult task. We have to up our game by about 20 per cent here and see how things work out," he explained.

Asked whether the team had planned out a particular strategy for the one-day series as they had done for the Test matches, Hussain said some tactics could not be used in one-dayers since the rules were quite different.

"After losing the first Test, we did reasonably well in the remaining two Test matches. We were quite unlucky in Bangalore. We have to put all that experience in the one-dayers as well," he said.

Asked to react to former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar's observation that England was one of the most boring teams to tour India, Hussain said "I have no real reaction to Mr Gavaskar's observations."

He said that Gavaskar was a legendary cricketer and he would listen to what such a great cricketer has to say.

"Even the Indian public gave us a lot of credit for our fighting spirit in the Test matches. Mr Gavaskar has his own opinion, we have ours."

Earlier reports:
Eng must learn World Cup lesson

England's tour of India : Complete coverage

Mail Cricket Editor