England toughen up

England captain Kevin Pietersen and coach Peter Moores discuss tactics

Peter Moores will urge England to recapture the aggression which served them so well last summer when they attempt to bounce back from their opening defeat against India.

England's stunning 4-0 NatWest Series success over South Africa at the end of last summer was achieved largely through their four-strong seam attack of Stuart Broad, James Anderson, Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison bullying the opposition batting line-up.

But since their arrival in India, England have struggled to dominate and were beaten in a warm-up game against a Mumbai XI and then suffered a 158-run defeat in Rajkot yesterday.

Any aggression to be seen in that match was from India's batsmen, who racked up a daunting total of 387 for five - the highest ODI score ever conceded by England.

They must try to respond on Monday at the Nehru Stadium, and Moores believes their best chance of achieving that is to be more aggressive.

"We thought we were a bit tentative in the way we played and could have been more aggressive in everything we did," he explained.

"We played some really good one-day cricket towards the end of our English summer against South Africa and we want to make sure we go out and back ourselves to play that sort of cricket out here in India - they are slightly different conditions but it's still a 50-over game and simple basics still apply.

"I think we can be more aggressive as a unit and take that into the next game and not wait for the game to take shape - we actually go and make it. We have to remind ourselves how we play our brand of cricket and play that brand of cricket in different places."

The tourists spent the night of the defeat analysing their performance and will practise tomorrow aiming to emulate their feat in Sri Lanka a year ago when they fell to a 119-run reverse in the first match and looked set for a series whitewash.

Instead, they regrouped and won the series 3-2 - and Moores believes there is no reason why the current squad cannot bounce back and claim England's first one-day series win in India since 1984/85.

"We've had a couple of knockbacks, but that's part of what international sport is about," he said.

"You're judged by how well you take those knockbacks and how you react to it as a team, and we're in that place at the moment.

"There's a long way to go in the series - still six games to go. We had a great one-day scrap with India in England a couple of years ago when we won the first one quite convincingly and they bounced straight back - and we'd like to do the same."