Change of pace may work well for Hollioake's men

Such is the social maelstrom on Barbados that the progress of the England team here might better be documented in the Court Circular rather than the sports pages.

Take Monday, for instance. For most of the side there was a golf event at Sandy Lane in aid of a children's charity - individual prizes shared by Viv Richards, who plays seldom, and the former Notts and Sussex all-rounder Franklyn Stephenson, who does little else - then a reception at Holders Hill House, where the opera season and arts festival are in full swing - Carmen yesterday evening - followed by a barbecue at the Sangsters. A fellow could get used to this.

It is back to work at Kensington Oval today though, with the second of the five-match one-day series. England are now on a roll that has seen them win eight one-day games on the bounce, including five since Adam Hollioake took over the captaincy before Christmas.

Each game played under his leadership has been tight: the sort where once England sides might not have been guaranteed to come through. Now, in tennis parlance, they are winning the big points.

On Sunday Hollioake's calmness was astounding. In part this is down to instinctive leadership skills and in part to an understanding of the disparate nature of his players.

He sends out the right signals. So, when Sunday's game was coming down to the wire, for instance, and Graham Thorpe mistimed a jump at mid-wicket that might have seen the end of Curtly Ambrose, Hollioake's reaction was not to express disappointment but to burst out laughing and to chide the fielder for being vertically challenged. And it is why he trusts Matthew Fleming to bowl the last overs or win a match under pressure with the bat: Fleming has served with the Green Jackets in Northern Ireland and, after that, Ambrose and Brian Lara take on a different perspective.

Fleming's bowling, together with that of Mark Ealham and Hollioake himself, illustrates the different approach one-day cricket requires. In the past two Tests, when Philo Wallace and Clayton Lambert were lambasting the new ball, England did not have a bowler with the wit to try something different.

But on a really good pitch, such as that at Kensington Oval, a bowler has only two defences against batsmen intent on hitting. The first is the yorker to get through the arc of the swinging bat. The second is to break up the rhythm of the batsman by disguised change of pace.

Not so long ago there were only a few - Stephenson, for example, tied batsmen in knots with his off-spinner - who could bowl in that manner. Now, in various forms - off-spinner, leg-break, palm grip - it is a mainstream skill.

Meanwhile, Mark Ramprakash will come into the team today, if England should decide to rest Thorpe's sore back.