Summary England want the side to bat round 'anchorman' Trott who has been in fine form at CT.
BIRMINGHAM (AFP) - India will bank on young seamer Bhuvaneshwar Kumar to contain England s batsmen when the Champions Trophy one-day final is played at Edgbaston on Sunday.
The lean 23-year-old has made such rapid strides since his debut six months ago that captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni regularly hands him the new ball over the faster Umesh Yadav or the more experienced Ishant Sharma.
Kumar has justified his skipper s faith with his accuracy and ability to swing the ball both ways, helping the world champions reach the final as the only unbeaten team in the eight-nation Champions Trophy tournament.
Left-arm seamer Ravindra Jadeja may be India s leading bowler with 10 wickets in four matches, but the early breakthroughs provided by Kumar have left several opponents rattled.
He began with the wicket of South Africa s Colin Ingram in his second over during the high-scoring tournament opener in Cardiff, then removed the dangerous Chris Gayle for 21 in the next match against the West Indies.
Kumar s twin-strikes against Pakistan, when he got rid of Nasir Jamshed and Mohammad Hafeez cheaply, contributed to India s eight-wicket win in the rain-hit game at Edgbaston.
During Thursday s semi-final against Sri Lanka in overcast Cardiff, Kumar dismissed Kusal Perera in his second over and finished with one for 18 from nine overs that helped restrict the Islanders to 181.
Kumar will be pleased the final is being played at Edgbaston where he has found the ball swinging a lot more than at the other two tournament venues of Cardiff and The Oval in London.
"I enjoyed playing here because the ball swung and seamed a lot," Kumar said after the win over Pakistan where his two for 19 from eight overs earned him the man-of-the-match award.
"It s good when you pitch the ball up and it swings. That helps to take initial wickets and put the opposition under pressure."
Making early inroads has been Kumar s forte. In his first international match, a Twenty20 game against Pakistan in December, he bowled Jamshed in his first over.
Then on his one-day international debut soon afterwards, he bowled Hafeez first ball and also dismissed Azhar Ali to finish with two for 27 from nine overs.
Kumar s impressive start saw the selectors award him a Test bow in the recent home series against Australia, where he claimed six wickets in four matches.
Whether it s the care with which he scratches out his mark, or the way he builds an innings, England s Jonathan Trott is not a man to be rushed.
Yet for all his success, the speed with which Trott, a key figure in England s top-order for Sunday s Champions Trophy final against India at his Warwickshire home ground of Edgbaston, scores his runs remains a talking point.
The England number three s career one-day strike rate of 77 has been reckoned by some observers to be too slow for the demands of the modern game.
Yet England have made it clear they want the rest of the side to bat round anchorman Trott who has been in fine form at the Champions Trophy.
His tally of 209 runs is the third highest in the tourmanent behind India s Shikhar Dawan (332) and Sri Lanka s Kumar Sangakkara (222) while a strike-rate of 89.69 is in the top five of batsmen who ve scored more than a hundred runs during this Champions Trophy.
But with the advent of two white balls in one-day internationals and helpful English conditions giving bowlers more of a chance early on, this tournament has not seen the huge scores many pundits forecast.
And that suggests the 32-year-old Trott, who marked his Test debut against Australia at The Oval in 2009 with a hundred, and England, without injured star batsman Kevin Pietersen, like the number three born in South Africa, for this tournament, may have got their approach spot-on.
"You just assess the situation and think about what is going to be a good score," said Trott, whose unbeaten 82 against South Africa at The Oval on Wednesday set the seal on England s passage into the final.
"I ve always had a pretty good general feeling for the game and cricketing instincts and intuition," added Trott, who impressively, averages over fifty in both Test and ODI cricket, also told reporters at Edgbaston on Friday.
"A few times people get things wrong and I ve probably been guilty of that and I think the way I ve played over the last couple of months I ve contributed to getting some decent totals for the team."
Born in Cape Town to a British father and South African mother, Trott played for South Africa junior sides from Under-15 to Under-19 level, and moved into the Boland and Western Province teams.
However, he took advantage of his British passport and his relationship with the late Bob Woolmer, who coached both South Africa and Warwickshire, to arrange a trial with the Birmingham-based county
