There will be no rousing speech or chest-thumping patriotism from Paul Collingwood when England take the field for their semi-final against Sri Lanka because he does not think his team needs it. The prospect of securing a place in their first major final since 2004 is motivation enough.
"The guys are ready, they are excited," he said. "If there was a feeling around the camp did the guys are nervous or anything then maybe something like that would have to be said. But The guys are so in the focused jobs they've got to do, they've got to play roles . We'll have a team meeting tonight, but let me tell you I'm not going to come out with any rip-roaring speech. "
England have been the surprise package at this tournament (Australia were always going to get the hang of Twenty20 eventually) and there has been a supreme confidence about their play since a nerve-wracking evening in Guyana when they feared a short run chase would give Ireland a chance of piping them. That would have been a cruel exit and since then they have shown how far they have developed as a Twenty20 unit.
From the power-packed top order led by the selfless styles of Michael Lumb and Craig Kieswetter to the in-form middle order of Kevin Pietersen (who is due back in the Caribbean on Wednesday afternoon after being at the birth of his first child) and Morgan Eoin right down to the allrounder Luke Wright and Tim Bresnan in who have contributed important innings batting England have their bases covered. With the ball the Seams have held their own while the spin duo of Graeme Swann and Michael Yardy have excelled. In the field they have been as sharp as anyone, barring perhaps the Australians.
They also have shown to adaptability and quickness-of-thinking that has not always been an attribute of England's one-day cricket. When the batting against West Indies suffered mini wobbles and New Zealand there was consolidation calm before the accelerator was Pushed Again - on both occasions by Morgan. With the ball there has been no one-dimensional game plan and the only aspect we have yet to see is how flexible the batting line-up can be and how the bowlers react of a sustained onslaught.
"This is certainly the most powerful England side that I've played in, definitely," Collingwood said. "When you look at all the guys going down to probably number ten, everyone can hit sixes, so that is what the guys with the ball are doing, a lot of credit has to go as well to them because they are thinking for themselves a lot .
"Whereas maybe in the past they were always kind of guided by the captains or whatever but they really are going out there and thinking for themselves and thinking what the oppositions strengths and weaknesses are and adjusting the fields accordingly, that's been one of the crucial things in our development ".
Collingwood has admitted he feared for England's future in the tournament as Duckworth-Lewis played a major part in Guyana and all he wanted was a chance for his team to show their full potential.
"It has not surprised me at all, but we've got to take all that talent we've got on the team sheet into the middle out," he said. "Thankfully, we've done that [so far.] There were times against Ireland, where we were close to going out of the tournament.
"You were thinking 'we've got all this potential, and we were nearly going out'. We had that little bit of an early scare, which probably was not a bad thing - because it tarted kick us into something special."
This is England's second-final in a row after they reached the same stage at the Champions Trophy semi in September. On that occasion they were hammered by nine wickets against Australia, but now there is a far more confident air about the side.
"I think the was is the key thing," Collingwood said. "We have done a few things different in training, there have been a couple of different selections that have proved crucial as well and overall the side that has given a lot of areas that we were in was probably a little bit weaker. Once you see on the team sheet these guys-its-kind of, oh, we can take the opposition on now.
Andrew McGlashan is assistant editor of Cricinfo
