England, already knocked out of the Champions Trophy after two straight defeats, will be playing for pride when they take on the West Indies in their last Super Eight Group 'A' league match at the Sardar Patel stadium, in Motera, Ahmedabad, on Saturday.
With two victories from as many matches, the West Indies sealed a semi-final berth on Thursday after beating India and will use the match to fine-tune strategies ahead of the bigger battles ahead.
However, West Indies captain Brian Lara refused to take the match lightly, saying there would be no room for experiment.
''It's important that we get the best team out there. We don't want to have a hiccup at this time. We did that in Malaysia, where we experimented in the game before the final, and lost the momentum,'' Lara said, adding he too is unlikely to skip the game for some rest.
Lara, who played against India despite not being full fit, said: ''I think I've got 36 hours or so before the game starts. At the end of the day if I'm fitter than I was against India, I'll definitely play.
'What we need is to keep winning games and not lose momentum mid stream."
Asked whether he might be tempted to experiment a little, he replied, ''It's hard to tell you what the plans are before the team meeting. We don't know what the eleven is going to be. [Corey] Collymore is on his way back to India [after having flown home for the birth of his daughter]. The necessity is to win.''
England, missing a few of their top players are clearly struggling and the batting is just not clicking, thus depriving their bowlers enough runs to bowl at. With the likes of Micheal Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick missing from the team, the onus of the batting has fallen of Andrew Strauss, Kevin Pietersen and captain Andrew Flintoff, who is playing in this tournament purely as a batsmen to give time for his ankle injury to heal before he restarts bowling.
Both Pietersen and Flintoff have failed as batsmen and though Strauss managed a 50 against Australia there was no support from the other end for him.
Also, the batting order of the English team is hard to explain, with a newcomer like Michael Yardy coming in before the experienced Paul Collingwood.
The bowling is in good hands of spearhead Steve Harmison and backed up by James Anderson and Sajid Mahamood. However with the batsmen failing to put runs on the board, the bowlers have found it difficult to mount any challenge on the opposition's batting. They had just 125 runs to play with against India and yet managed to take six wickets, while against Australia they had 169 runs and had the Australians in early trouble taking quick three wickets before Damien Martyn, with a classy 78, took Australia to victory.
The wicket for Saturday's match looks similar to the one used for the India-West Indies and South Africa-Sri Lanka matches, and it likely to have some juice early on. However, the dew would also have to be taken into account and the team winning the toss would have a huge advantage.
The teams:
West Indies: Brian Lara (capt), Chris Gayle, Shivnaraine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Runako Morton, Dwayne Bravo, Marlon Samuels, Dwayne Smith, Wavell Hinds, Carlton Baugh (wicketkeeper), Corry Collymore, Fidel Edwards, Jerome Taylor, Ian Bradshaw.
England: Andrew Flintoff (capt), James Anderson, Ian Bell, Ricky Clarke, Paul Collingwood, Jamie Dalrymple, Steve Harmison, Ed Joyce, Jon Lewis, Sajid Mahamood, Kevin Pietersen, Chris Read (wicketkeeper), Andrew Strauss, Michael Yardy.
