India won the toss and decided to field against England
Ian Bell has been cut from the XI after failing to give England satisfactory starts to their innings

The series is already safely in India’s hands after four dominant performances, but their focus is firmly on a 7-0 whitewash. England have been narrowing the margins of defeat each time, but in truth have only competed on a level playing field for brief periods. There is much for Kevin Pietersen to ponder, while Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s life is pretty rosy.

England have attempted to shake things up by making two changes for Cuttack, bringing in Alastair Cook and Steve Harmison in place of Ian Bell and James Anderson. This will be Cook’s first game of the series while Harmison is making a comeback after being dropped for the offspinner Graeme Swann in the third ODI. Harmison fared poorly in his two games, taking 1 for 125 at an economy-rate of 7.35 per over.

The switch in fast bowlers was expected after a wicketless four matches for Anderson where he has conceded 158 runs at 6.32 per over, but Bell’s omission is more of a surprise because of the faith shown in him by the England management. However, he too has laboured during the one-dayers and really struggled during the 22-over chase in Bangalore where he managed 12 off 15 balls during the Powerplays.

Cook will be under the spotlight early on after Dhoni put England in, a decision Pietersen called “surprising.” The pressure will be on for the visitors to get away to a positive start, and at least he’ll have a familiar face at the other end in Essex team-mate Ravi Bopara.

India, true to their word, have also made a couple of changes with Irfan Pathan earning a recall in place of Munaf Patel and Rohit Sharma coming back into the middle order as Gautam Gambhir is rested. However, you sense it will take more than a couple of changes to disrupt India’s momentum.

India 1 Virender Sehwag, 2 Sachin Tendulkar, 3 Suresh Raina, 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 Rohit Sharma, 6 Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt & wk), 7 Yusuf Pathan, 8 Irfan Pathan, 9 Harbhajan Singh, 10 Zaheer Khan, 11 Ishant Sharma

England1 Alastair Cook, 2 Ravi Bopara, 3 Kevin Pietersen (capt), 4 Paul Collingwood, 5 Andrew Flintoff, 6 Owais Shah, 7 Samit Patel, 8 Matt Prior (wk), 9 Graeme Swann, 10 Stuart Broad, 11 Steve Harmison