The England ODI side is rather like Sven's soccer side: could have all the right elements and looks, on paper, as if it ought to carry all before it... but both governing bodies must be desperately concerned that visible signs of the sides punching at or above their weight...

Some allowance has to be made for the fact that some of the bowlers are relative novices: Simon Jones is my tip to be the best English bowler (Test or ODI) of his generation... but his ODI experience is virtually non-existent; Harmison has more caps... but the sort of variation that he needs is something fairly new to his game: geat slower ball at Edgbaston last summer... but not a delivery he appears able to reproduce with the consistency of (say) Shoaib Akhtar's slower ball; at least two from Tremlett, Plunkett and Anderson are likely to be involved... yet the two most likely to succeed (unless Anderson really does arise again) have virtually no experience whatsoever.

Of course... inexperience doesn't entirely wash when it comes to the batsmen: the current weakest ODI link (Vaughan) has stacks of experience.. he just hasn't done anything liek as much with it as Tresco has done. That said.. there's comparatively little ODI experience to share around between Strauss, Pietersen, Bell, Prior, Solanki, Prior and Geraint Jones...

I think it will boil down to the pitches: if they are sporting enough for the likes of Harmison, Jones, Tremlett, Plunkett and Flintoff to be a real handful (quite a quintet, that) then I can't see anyone even getting close to matching the pressure England could exert (you could see wickets falling regularly and typical totals of < 220).... but if the tracks are such that you might as well bowl Collingwood and Bell as bowl Flintoff and Harmison.... then you'll be looking at routine 280+ scores and I just can't see much point in England even turning up.