England captain Jos Buttler and coach Matthew Mott need victory over bitter rivals Australia to ease pressure on their jobs and give lift off to the T20 World Cup campaign.
Ashes tours to Australia often finish off England captains and coaches and while defeat for the team at the Kensington Oval would not be terminal for their World Cup hopes it would heap further scrutiny on the management by leaving them at the mercy of results elsewhere and in a net run rate battle with Scotland to reach the Super Eights.
England are itching to get going. The washout against Scotland and rain-ravaged series with Pakistan have been very frustrating for a side who have not enjoyed much success in white-ball cricket recently and lost their aura in India.
Several members of this squad could well be playing their last global competition for England giving them plenty to play for on Saturday. Mark Wood, Jonny Bairstow, Adil Rashid, Moeen Ali and even Buttler could all go if this tournament ends without England making an impression.
There is a sharp contrast between the England and Australia approaches to this World Cup despite the Australians looking to unite all three world titles with the 50-over World Cup and Test championship in the bag.
England pulled all their players back from the IPL to play against Pakistan responding to criticism of not taking preparation for India seriously enough. Stardust has been added to the coaching staff. Andrew Flintoff casts a shadow over Mott as a legendary former player, his celebrity status reinforced by a camera crew filming him this weekend for the next series of his BBC documentary ‘Field of Dreams’.
Kieron Pollard has been employed as an assistant to provide local knowledge despite England being regular visitors to the Caribbean for white ball-tours. Rob Key, the director of cricket, and Luke Wright, the national selector, are in Barbados to oversee the early stages of the campaign as well and the Manchester City sports psychologist, David Young, is here to help with mental preparation.