'Can England play good cricket in India?'

Kapil Dev reckons that England will struggle to repeat a whitewash of India in this month's five-match ODI series. 

The English team, which thrashed India 3-0 in the five-match ODI series last month, will fly to India on Monday for the ODI series and a Twenty20 match. 

Dev said that India will be a far more potent threat in the subcontinent conditions.

"Can they play good cricket in India?

"It won't be very easy.

"India played very poor cricket in the summer, but injuries hit them badly.

"You don't expect to have almost 29 boys, because of the injury call-ups, coming on tour in a series of 40 or 50 days," the Daily Express quoted Dev as saying.  

"All credit to England, but when teams get hit by injuries like that you're not going to get a good performance," he added.

Flower backs Cook to repeat whitewash

Meanwhile, England coach Andy Flower believes the growing maturity of captain Alastair Cook will prove vital to the team's success in the upcoming ODI series.

"He's been excellent as a leader and grown in confidence. On the tour of Bangladesh, when he captained while Andrew Strauss was resting, he grew and learned a lot and I'd say we've seen similar growth this summer," the Daily Express quoted Flower as saying.

"It's always nice to see someone grow in confidence. It's horrible to see anyone lose confidence in any walk of life. So the opposite, seeing someone grow in confidence, is a really nice thing, particularly for us as coaches," he added.