The Surfer

Running down one side is a pebble-dash wall - sporting a couple of feeble examples of graffiti - which would prevent a left-handed batsman from attempting anything approaching an off drive. He would have little alternative but to cart every ball to leg and towards a play park.

England's last World Cup campaign in the Caribbean is best remembered for pre-dawn pedalos and Battle of the Bottle headlines. This time, the Red Stripes and the El Dorados went hand-in-hand with terrific team spirit. With 2011 looming, the first thing to do is follow Andy Flower's example and be ruthless in squad selection. Yesterday's six-hitters are of no use tomorrow.

England under Flower have barely put a foot wrong – and when they have, redemption has been swift: Ravi Bopara was dropped for the Ashes decider, Owais Shah booted out of the one-day team, and Paul Collingwood rested from the NatWest Series. There is a decisiveness about Flower that makes the old days of wrongly aligned planets and Calcutta smog look like low farce.

Everything to the last detail is monitored and logged: opposition, and individual performances down to wind direction (at Bridgetown they knew that the six‑hitting side was to the Greenidge-Haynes stand), boundary sizes, hitting distances, anything that will help. Flower, a disciple of Moneyball, Michael Lewis's book about the statistics-driven baseball team, the Oakland Athletics, believes that "we are only scratching the surface with cricket stats. They will play an increasing role in how you formulate strategies or pick players."

Every time I coach young cricketers I use Paul Collingwood as an example of the perfect role model. I have been working in Zimbabwe these past five days, giving batting master-classes to some of their elite squad. After one session I held a Q&A with Kevin Curran, the Under-19 coach, and some of his players. Kevin asked: "When I was in England I just couldn't see Paul Collingwood as much of a player. Why has he become so good?"

They messed up in the Caribbean and that needs to be seriously examined in cricket- ing terms, but more often than not, especially in the last two years, the Indian team has given us much joy and lots to be proud of. We need to remember that. Here's what one India bats- man said after the team got back from the Windies. “The World Cup's seven months down the line and this has all (the over- the-top reaction) been quite scary. I'm going to send my family away during the Cup, because, God forbid we lose, someone might try and burn my house down.“ And if that happens, Indian cricket will never be the same again.

Travelling between islands in the West Indies has never been a smooth ride, but some of the horror stories from this tour- nament need repeating. The major airline, Liat (variously expanded to Luggage In Another Town or Leaves Island Any Time) once put Sunil Gavaskar in a jump seat along side the pilots. At other times, people with confirmed reser- vations were offloaded, flights left either half an hour before scheduled time or after and scores were left stranded without their baggage. Proper infra- structure is the first check before awarding a region or country a major event. Either the ICC could not fix problems, or just overlooked them.

Despite that, yesterday was not one of those “Where were you when” occasions for a number of reasons. Principally, because there is widespread recognition that it is not the pinnacle of the game — not at international level, at any rate. Take a straw poll of English professional cricketers and ask them which domestic one-day tournament they would like to win and the unanimous choice would be Twenty20. But at international level, cricketers still regard the fifty-over World Cup as the pinnacle of the one-day game.

Broad steadied himself under the catch, cupped his hands in readiness, but the ball mysteriously landed a couple of yards behind him. In the dusky, desert sky, he had completely lost track of the grey-white ball. Sidebottom’s reaction was typically apoplectic. But little did he know that Broad had just inadvertently set in motion a chain of events that would dramatically change England’s Twenty20 fortunes.

Like the art of player management and making sure whatever available talent India has is harnessed properly and maximised. Far too many times for comfort, I've been where the current lot of Indian players today are vilified by all and sundry, having every single thing they do torn apart and then some. Someone's got to look at handling both them and the things that come with playing for India, responsibly. There's the pressure of performance, the pressure of expectations, pressure from a very intrusive media including former players.

Around the counties they will be hoping for a surge of interest as a consequence of England's advance to the final. When India won the first World Twenty20 in South Africa in 2007 the ramifications were enormous. A format that was despised in India was suddenly embraced. The dollar signs started to flash and the entrepreneurs swooped. An English victory in Barbados today would not have such a dramatic impact, but it could invigorate the Twenty20 tournament here in June and July.

Australia also look vulnerable with who follows them. Neither Brad Haddin nor Clarke, who have lately come in at three and four, have had good tournaments; there is a growing view in Australia that Clarke is not worth a place in this format as a player. Australia have been relying on a deadly lower middle order for salvation, Cameron White and the Hussey brothers having hit 28 sixes between them.