Graeme Swann rather than Luke Wright is the player who should be considered unlucky to be left out of the side for the one-day international tomorrow. One of the most important players in the unexpected 3-2 win in Sri Lanka last winter, Swann's omission is due to the seam-friendly start time of 9am and a belief that the batting order cannot be deep enough.

England think that their best chance is with pace and want to exploit the first hour if they bowl first. They also see Andrew Flintoff and Stephen Harmison as more dangerous when the shine is off the ball. Effectively, that commits to a four-man battery and while Swann bowled at least as well as Samit Patel in the warm-ups he is an inferior batsman to his county colleague.

Personally, I see a strong case for playing Bopara at seven, where he has been effective in the past, and Swann at eight ahead of three specialist seamers. The batting may be slightly weaker for the loss of Patel, but it would place greater responsibility on those who ought to be scoring the runs. In the second warm-up batsmen stood accused of leaving the job to each other.

Wright, as Kevin Pietersen said, has done nothing wrong in recent weeks; at number eight, he has neither batted nor bowled. But Bopara is better suited to the conditions here - he has a broader range of shots - and I hope that he is now given a proper, unbroken opportunity to cement a place in the team. Pietersen might also give him an over or two at some stage.

The so-called 'spat' at nets this morning stemmed from the two sides practising at the same time. England were annoyed that India seemed to be hitting balls into their area. They had a point, but equally the Indian right-handers were simply slog/sweeping spin into the correct place. After the genuine acrimony between the sides in 2007 - remember the jellybean incident at Trent Bridge - anything like this is sure to be magnified.