Davina The Crow And England Woe

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Davina covers her beak.

By Dave Tickner

Friday's action certainly raised some troubling questions.

Why does England's middle-order do it every time? Why does Kevin Pietersen drop so many catches? Will Vaughan's boys bounce back to win their next two games and reach the Super Eight?

And most worryingly of all, when did Comic Relief stop being a load of comedians arsing about and start being an excuse for Davina McCall to irritate the nation with her drunken-auntie-at-a-wedding dancing, inexplicable tendency to suddenly SHOUT random WORDS in the middle of sentences, and increasing physical resemblance to a crow?

I phoned up and pledged Ł10,000 if Davina would get off the screen, go back to her nest, and never come back. But obviously she was having too much fun annoying me to fly home and help 4,000 African families get a mosquito net.

That's not true. But she could have made more of an effort, like Kate Thornton who gamely presented her segment of the charity chuckle-a-thon dressed as the Purple One from Quality Street.

But enough poking fun at people trying to raise millions of pounds for worthwhile causes, and back to a far more deserving target.

The true significance of England's defeat to New Zealand should only become apparent once the Super Eight stage reaches its conclusion, because even this poor display did little to suggest England will struggle against Kenya or Canada based on the quality of their clash on Wednesday.

But England now face the prospect of having to win at least four of their six Super Eight games to have a fighting chance of reaching the semi-finals, and that's undoubtedly a tough ask based on what we've seen from the other contenders (except Pakistan) so far.

There also seems to be little England can do to improve their side. Andrew Strauss for Ed Joyce is perhaps the only possible change to an XI that otherwise looks pretty well-balanced. The pitch at Beausejour doesn't look like being a batting paradise, and there's a strong case for picking what could be England's Test top six at the start of the domestic summer.

England's batting tactics - set a base and kick on later in the innings, rather than attack the powerplays - also looked understandable given the conditions; it was the execution that let them down as the loss of three key wickets in quick succession at a critical time terminally stalled the innings.

With the ball, Monty Panesar continues to learn and improve as a one-day bowler, while Liam Plunkett and James Anderson have the potential to be a formidable new-ball pairing, although the former still has a worrying lack of control at times.

Much like dancing Davina in fact.