Wednesday, October 10, 2001 England, like everyone else, are trying to find their best combination for the 2003 World Cup. The advances they have made in Test cricket have not been carried over to the short game. There are several reasons for this and I don't expect England to address them during this tour of Zimbabwe.

Winning is always good for morale but that is all that England will have gained. On present form Zimbabwe offer no tougher challenge than England players face daily in county cricket. While morale is important, Nasser's boys will learn faster playing against stronger teams. I doubt too that England's management can be much wiser about their strategy for the World Cup.

The first step is to decide on the core of the team. You should not need to experiment continuously to identify the best players. This is where England have gone seriously wrong in recent years -- the one-day team has changed with almost every tournament. The better teams stick with mainly the same side, making just one or two tweaks at a time. One-day and Test teams should also have plenty of overlap. Players at international level must be able to adapt to both versions of the game, otherwise there is a question mark over their ability.

Selectors need to be ruthless. Not in the way that Darren Gough and Alec Stewart have been left out of the winter programme, but by always picking the best players available. There is something wrong with England's World Cup preparation if it begins without Andrew Caddick, Gough and Stewart. I still think Stewart is fit enough to make it to South Africa, and a wicketkeeper who is also a front-line batsman is too valuable to leave out.

England must pick five front-line bowlers. They have got away with it in Zimbabwe by using the likes of Ben Hollioake and Mark Ramprakash. This is a gamble that could, and probably will, backfire. Top sides ruthlessly exploit any weakness in the bowling -- look at what happened to India against South Africa. I would do away with relying on bits-and-pieces players to fill out the bowling attack. Only quality will matter in the World Cup. It is in the bowling department that one-day games are won and lost.

But if they do nothing else England should now decide on a squad of 14 or so players that they think can deliver the World Cup and stand by them. Endless experimentation with the line-up is the most destructive strategy of all.

Javed Miandad, Pakistan's highest-scoring batsman and latterly their coach, was talking to Kamran Abbasi. His column appears at Wisden.com every Wednesday.

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