India panicked England did not wickets kept falling seven of them for 59

India panicked, England did not, wickets kept falling, seven of them for 59.England had their series draw. 250: 216 min, 302 balls.Ganguly’s 50: 82 min, 64 balls, 4 fours, 2 sixes.ENGLAND WON BY FIVE RUNSUmpires: S C Gupta and M S Mahal.TV replay umpire: N N Menon.Man of the match: M E Trescothick.Man of the series: S R Tendulkar.. Andrew Flintoff last night described England’s five-run victory over India as “one of the best games of cricket I’ve ever played in” after his incredible final over at the Wankhede stadium here enabled England to end the one-day series level at 3-3. “To have it go down to the final over with a big crowd like that was just awesome. Taking my shirt off and running around like that wasn’t rehearsed, it was completely instinctive and nothing to do with football because I’m not a big football fan – the footballers who have done it are probably carrying a few less pounds than me anyway.”Nasser Hussain, the England captain, was delighted at the way his team bounced back from their hammering at Kanpur just over a week ago to claim narrow victories in Delhi and here – and he paid particular tribute to Flintoff.”Fred’s got a lot of character,” Hussain said. “He’s put in a lot of effort off the field in the last year or so and it’s now beginning to pay dividends for him.”Getting a 3-3 draw is not worth going over the top about, but we have just won eight out of the last 11 matches and we are going in the right direction.”Some of the young lads like Flintoff and Paul Collingwood have really come on during the last few months, our fielding has improved and in tight situations we have improved.”Hussain added: “The great thing is that there are other people who can come back into this squad like Alan Mullally, Mark Ealham and Alec Stewart. They can all come back into this side and there are lots of people pushing for places.”.

Shortly before kick-off, the first Norwich side to win promotion to the top division, Ron Saunders’ team of 1971-2, paraded around Carrow Road. The goalkeeper, Kevin Keelan, came all the way from Florida for the occasion and for 70 minutes would have backed himself to keep a clean sheet. It looked as though Norwich’s run of six games without a win, during which they had scored just two goals and slipped to the fringes of the play-off zone, was set to continue.Football’s saving grace on such occasions is the chance, however faint, that the game might suddenly explode. Nine times out of 10 of course it expires like a damp squib, but this was one of those occasions when the crowd’s patience was rewarded, three goals in breathless minutes representing fireworks that in the circumstances would have done credit to Gandalf.The man responsible was City’s Darren Kenton, a classy central defender currently playing out of position at left-back.

Having played the ball into the area to David Nielsen, Kenton kept running and was on hand to pick up the loose ball when Nielsen was tackled by United’s Robert Page. The shot with which he beat Simon Tracey in the Sheffield goal was more prod than drive, but it was good enough.As was his header from Phil Mulryne’s corner two minutes later, which, were it not for Nielsen’s distracting attempt to help it on its way, would surely have been either saved or kicked off the line. Having enjoyed the majority of possession United looked stunned by the injustice of it all, but gained an immediate lift courtesy of Michael Brown’s rousing left-foot drive from 25 yards.”I can’t believe we’re 13 points behind Norwich,” the United manager, Neil Warnock, said. “If we still had hopes for the play-offs I thought we had to win today. We were by far the better side but I’d rather we’d been bad and won.”The Norwich manager Nigel Worthington saw things differently. “Not the best of games but we stuck to our task and deserved to come out on top,” he said. His praise for the impressive Kenton, whom he fined two weeks wages before Christmas for breaking a curfew, was rather less fulsome.

“I hope the penny drops because he’s got the ability to go all the way,” he said.Goals: Kenton (72) 1-0; Kenton (74) 2-0; Brown (77) 2-1.Norwich City: Green, Kenton, Mackay, Fleming, Nedergaard, Rivers (Mulryne, 68), Holt, A Roberts, McVeigh, Libbra (Notman, 69), Nielsen. Substitutes not used: Crichton (gk), Sutch, Llewellyn.Sheffield United: Tracey, Uhlenbeek, Curle, Page, Ullathorne, Brown, Ford, Devlin, Tonge (Montgomery, 78), Asaba (D’Jaffo, 86), Ndlovu (Peschisolido, 78). Substitutes not used: De Vogt (gk), Sandford.Referee: D Gallagher (Oxfordshire).Bookings: Norwich City Kenton, Libbra, Fleming, Nielsen. Sheffield United Asaba, Ford, Page.Man of the match: Kenton.Attendance: 17,348.. The host nation Mali enjoyed a deserved 2-0 win over South Africa in Kayes yesterday to reach the semi-finals of the African Nations’ Cup and spark scenes of national celebration.