On Thursday, the England cricket team witnessed double blow as first they lost the first ODI against India of the three-match series quite convincingly and later on their in-form batsman Alex Hales was ruled out of the remained of the India-England ODI series with a side strain. It is reported that he might be out of action for three or four weeks. Dawid Malan will be his replacement.

The nerve-racking defeat against India in the opening ODI will add to the pain for the English team management as Hales was in tremendous form in the previous ODI series against Australia. In fact, Hales was the man in control when England chased down India’s total of 148 in the second T20I of the series in Cardiff on July 6 as he played an unbeaten knock of 58 off 41 balls on a slightly difficult wicket to help England level the series with a 5-wicket win.

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Speaking at the toss on Thursday, England skipper Eoin Morgan had already revealed that Hales was going for scans in the afternoon. He said, “Unfortunate, Alex has done his side. How long he is out we don’t know. He is going for a scan this afternoon which brings Dawid Malan into the squad. With that change, Joe Root goes up to 3 and Stokes at 5 which means we are where we were last summer around this time.”

However, it will be interesting to see how Morgan makes changes with his batting order going into the second game after Kuldeep Yadav spun a web around them in the first ODI. The next ODI will be played at Lord’s on Saturday. In the first ODI, Kuldeep Yadav broke a plethora records after his spell of 6/25 in the first ODI.