ENGLAND coach Andy Flower has told his team to take a positive approach against India at Lord’s today.

The World Twenty20 fixture is a game of huge significance to both sides after they were defeated in their opening fixtures of the Super Eight stage. “We respect India tremendously but we don’t fear them,” said Flower.

“We will not win this tournament playing conservative cricket. You’ve got to find a mix of attack and good decision-making.”

England, who have never won a major one-day trophy, play India today and West Indies tomorrow in a two-day period that will define whether they reach the semi-final stage.

England were dismissed for 111 – their lowest-ever Twenty20 international score – as they suffered a heavy defeat in their opening Super Eight match against South Africa.

Flower added: “It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride in the Twenty20 so far.

“We played brilliantly in our warm-up game against West Indies, lost to Holland in a bit of a thriller, played very well against Pakistan and we were very disappointing against South Africa, who pretty much dominated us from the outset.

“I’m not sure where we are ranked in Twenty20 international cricket, but in 50 overs we are around sixth in the world and at the moment that’s the level we’re performing in Twenty20 cricket as well – we’ve got lots of room for improvement.”

Flower said the demands of the tournament’s busy schedule would be a useful learning experience for the team, but he was also keen for them to be competitive, rather than just use it as a testing ground.

“These tournaments are without a doubt important to the team’s development, but in saying that this tournament’s about performance.

“Development is something that will, without a doubt, happen in time and the level of learning will happen but ultimately it is about performance.

“This is a World Cup and we want to win it in our home country and performance has to be our first priority while we try and learn and improve with each performance.”

India captain Mahendra Dhoni is backing his side to bounce back strongly from Friday’s seven-wicket defeat by West Indies, which has severely dented the holders’ hopes of defending their title.

“The pressure will bring the best out of us,” said Dhoni. “We’ll be under pressure to perform in the next game (against England) but that was the story in the last World Cup.

“After the first game (which was washed out), every other game was a do-or-die situation for us and we played some of the toughest teams and got through to the finals to win the Cup so it’s not like we can’t do it again.

“You have to be at your best because some of the teams are playing really good cricket so you don’t really want to take chances.”

India posted a reasonable total of 153-7 following a brilliant 67 off 43 balls from Yuvraj Singh after losing three wickets inside the first four overs.

But despite dismissing West Indies captain Chris Gayle cheaply, Dwayne Bravo guided his side home and they could all but seal a place in the semi-finals if they triumphed over South Africa at The Oval yesterday.

“We’ll just consider it an off day for us but in this format we have seen some of the best sides losing so we’re not worried too much about it,” added Dhoni.

“Even though we didn’t bat well, we still had the firepower to make a game out of it and it ran until the second-last over. Hopefully when we
turn up for the next game we won’t make too many errors.” (Cricinfo)