Bangalore : Skipper Andrew Strauss led from the front yet again to help England pull off a tie in a last-ball thriller against India at the M Chinnaswamy stadium on Sunday.
Opting to bat first, India powered by Sachin Tendulkar’s 120 off 115 balls scored 338 all out in 49.5 overs. In reply, riding on Strauss’ 158, England equalled India’s score of 338 in 50 overs by losing eight wickets.
Tendulkar with his 47th ODI century also became the only batsman in the tournament’s history to make five hundreds.
With this tie England moved level with India on top of World Cup Group B.
Chasing a mammoth 339, England were off to a flyer with openers Strauss and Kevin Pietersen scoring boundaries at will.
Pietersen was gathering momentum with every shot until a blistering straight drive was wonderfully caught by Munaf Patel off his own bowling.
Leg-spinner Piyush Chawla trapped Jonathan Trott (16) leg before wicket to provide Indian the second breakthrough.
But Strauss and Ian Bell (69) responded with some typically sensible batting to take the game away from India. The duo got a stand of 170 runs for the third wicket.
At the end of 42 overs, England were cruising at 2-281 and victory looked inevitable.
But their decision to take the batting powerplay in the 43rd over backfired as they lost four wickets — Bell, Strauss, Paul Collingwood (1) and Matt Prior (4)  in a span of just eight runs.
This gave Indian bowlers a chance to claw their way back into the game and they grabbed this opportunity with both hands. England could only manage to get 25 runs from the powerplay.
However, some lusty blows in the end from Tim Bresnan, Graeme Swann and Ajmal Shahzad helped England level the scores.
For India, Zaheer Khan emerged with figures of 3-64 in 10 overs while Munaf Patel and Piyush Chawla claimed two wickets each.
Earlier, Indian openers Virender Sehwag and Tendulkar provided India with a good start scoring runs well around six-runs-per-over.
Sehwag looked edgy during the start of his innings, but after playing off the initial overs he got back to his destructive best.
The dashing opener played a cameo of 35 from 26 balls including six boundaries before Bresnan had him caught by Prior behind the wicket.
Tendulkar then got along with Gautam Gambhir stitching a partnership of 134 runs for the second wicket.
Off-spinner Swann bowled a beauty to get rid of Gambhir, who was looking dangerous on 51.
Struggling batsman Yuvraj Singh struck form at the right time scoring a sublime 58 off 50 balls. The left-hander was also part of two crucial partnerships — 56 with Tendulkar and 69 with Dhoni — that helped India cross the 300-run mark in 45.3 overs.
However, India failed to capitalise on the good start by losing their last seven wickets for just 33 runs.
For England, pace man Bresnan emerged as the best bowler with figures of 5-48, while James Anderson was the worst by recording England’s most expensive World Cup figures of 1-91.