England facing crunch time

Michael Vaughan has insisted that the spirit in the England camp is still high as they approach their crucial game against West Indies at Lord's. With New Zealand already in the final, England must win, and pick up a bonus point, to ensure they join them.

"It's a massive game," Vaughan admitted. "We must try to emulate the performance at Leeds, and we'll just try to win. We won't be worrying about a bonus point. If you try to be clever, you might come unstuck."

England went down by six wickets to New Zealand at Bristol despite a maiden one-day century from Andrew Flintoff, but Vaughan is still upbeat. "Confidence is pretty high," he said after the game. "I thought the performance was pretty good. The toss was quite important and to get 237, we were quite happy with that total."

Looking ahead to tomorrow's game, he said: "It's like a cup final. Sunday's game was not irrelevant because they're all important games, but we knew that even if we beat New Zealand we could still be knocked out if we lost to West Indies."

He continued: "Tomorrow's match is clearly a must-win and if we do that we'll have one step in the final. It's a massive game and we obviously played well against them last Thursday so confidence is high. It's important we just go out and put some pressure on the West Indies early to see if they have got any cobwebs from the other day, because they did suffer a heavy defeat."

On his own poor form, Vaughan refused to be too down about it: "It's obviously a concern because I'm at the top of the order and I'm not scoring many runs," he said. "In the last three games I've got to 12, 14 and 12 so I've got in and then just got out. I just know there's a big score around the corner and if I keep doing the basics right and practising hard I know I'm a good enough player to turn it around."

West Indies, who are level on points with England, but have two more games to play, lost to New Zealand this weekend by five wickets, and collapsed to 216 all out after having built a good start. They are likely to be boosted by the return of Ridley Jacobs, who missed the last game after aggravating a calf injury during a net practice. Surprisingly, the management announced the team for today's game, naming Devon Smith for his first game in the competition. His inclusion will bolster the batting line-up, while weakening the bowling, for he replaces Jermaine Lawson. Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan are expected to fill in the overs.

England meanwhile, could recall Anthony McGrath or Ashley Giles in place of Sajid Mahmood, who had a disappointing debut at Bristol, going for 56 runs from seven overs.

England (probable) 1 Marcus Trescothick, 2 Michael Vaughan (capt), 3 Robert Key, 4 Andrew Strauss, 5 Andrew Flintoff, 6 Paul Collingwood, 7 Geraint Jones (wk), 8 Anthony McGrath, 9 Darren Gough, 10 James Anderson, 11 Stephen Harmison.

West Indies 1 Chris Gayle, 2 Brian Lara (capt), 3 Devon Smith, 4 Ramnaresh Sarwan, 5 Shivnarine Chanderpaul, 6 Dwayne Bravo, 7 Ricardo Powell, 8 Dwayne Smith, 9 Ridley Jacobs (wk), 10 Ian Bradshaw, 11 Tino Best.