ANTIGUA: CRICKET - Australia and England prepare for Sunday's World Cup clash in their final Super Eights match at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in St John's

World champions Australia believe they can all but eliminate England from the World Cup on Sunday (April 8) in their final Super Eights match at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in St John's, Antigua. Australia middle-order batsman Michael Hussey, who has yet to get into double figures at the World Cup, said on Friday (April 6) that his tea, were expecting a "tough" game when they face England on Sunday. "I'm expecting a pretty desperate England. They've got some good players who are playing pretty well at the moment. Its going to be a tough game, but for us we're taking it as a one- off game against England," said Hussey. "There is huge motivation for us as well. One, if we win we are one win closer to making the semi finals, and two, we can almost knock another team out of the competition which is a huge motivation for us," he added. Australia, who travel to Barbados and Grenada for the remainder of the second round after Sunday's match, top the Super Eights standings with six points. England have only two. At the start of the week, England said they needed one win from their next two Super Eight matches to have a good chance of reaching the World Cup semi-finals. Wednesday's two-run defeat by Sri Lanka leaves them with the prospect of having to beat the mighty Australians on Sunday to fulfil that wish. On current form Michael Vaughan's men will not trouble the world champions, but Ravi Bopara and Paul Nixon's battling 87-run seventh-wicket stand which so nearly carried them to victory over Sri Lanka offers some hope. "The first and foremost thing is you've got to look after your performance. We'll be looking after preparation today and tomorrow and try to produce a performance. We know that if we do that we'll give Australia a good game. Then its more towards the end of the tournament when you start to look at the tables and maybe run rates and things like that. We've just got to look at trying to win games of cricket. We've got four games left," Vaughan told reporters, "We know if we win all four of them we got a great chance at qualifying," he added. Despite the belief they must defeat Australia, there is a scenario where they could lose on Sunday but still have an outside chance of qualifying for the semi-finals. Indeed, coach Duncan Fletcher predicted they would need to win four games out of six in the Super Eights following their group stage defeat by New Zealand which in effect counted as a second round match. If they lose to Australia, England must beat Bangladesh, top-ranked South Africa and wounded hosts West Indies to keep a slim hope of going through if other results go their way. They already have two points from beating Ireland last week. Andrew Strauss, who has not featured since a poor tour of Australia, will expect to play on Sunday after opener Ed Joyce again flopped and in turn failed to create a sufficient platform for big hitters Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff.

ITN Source | April 8, 2007

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