England appears the weakest amongst test playing nations

On the strength of todays performance against New Zealand, England to me at least, appears to be the weakest side in the World Cup amongst the top 8 test playing nations. Based on what one saw today, they seem to have only four players in the entire team capable of making a difference in a game - Pietersen, Collingwood, Flintoff and Panesar. The rest of the team is pretty ordinary and collectively the team appears to justify its low ICC one-day ranking. Vaughan and Bell are worthy test match performers but appear to be pretty pedestrian in the one-day version of the game. Vaughan's dismissal today betrayed his lack of maturity as a one-day batsman. He had been beaten trying to pull time and again prior to his dismissal. The number of times he missed out on his favorite pull shot should have given him some idea of the slowness of the pitch. But that was not to happen and he finally played on trying to pull. What was particularly baffling was that Pietersen had just picked three fours of the previous over. Good sense would have dictated that Vaughan give support to Pietersen rather than chance his own arm.

I will not be surprised if we see a close finish in the game between Kenya and England ahead, especially if Pietersen and Collingwood fail to fire in their batting. The English bowling is definitely much weaker compared to competition. Only Panesar and Flintoff are bowlers who can create opportunities irrespective of conditions. Anderson and Plunkett will be picked off quite easily against tougher opposition. Dalrymple is quite clearly not international class. It might behoove England to think about bringing in either Sajid Mehmood or Jon Lewis in his place unless they have tremendous faith in his batting abilities.