Paul Collingwood column

By Paul Collingwood England batsman

It seems there has been talk back home about the form of our captain Michael Vaughan and whether he should drop down the batting order.

He's a quality player. He's world class, but is obviously going through a patch where he is struggling to score runs.

Michael is experienced at dealing with the moving ball at the top of the order and we need him to come good for the next five games Paul Collingwood

We have all gone through them and all know how difficult it is to get out of them.

What you need to do when you are in that form is go out there give the ball a whack and hope it's your day. Then once you have hit the middle of the bat you can go on from there.

I remember the same thing happening to me in Australia at the start of the year.

You never know where your next run's coming from. I decided that if it was in my slot I would give it a whack and it ended up working out for me.

People have talked about moving Vaughany down to six or seven and Andrew Flintoff opening instead.

But Michael is experienced at dealing with the moving ball at the top of the order and we need him to come good for the next five games.

The Kensington Oval, where England play three vital matches

We also need Freddie to be there at the end of the overs smashing it about like he normally does.

I am writing this on the day the hosts, West Indies, have been all but dumped out of the World Cup.

It's a shame for them. They have probably felt a bit of pressure from the locals who are very passionate about their cricket.

There has also been pressure from the media and the West Indies Cricket Board, and there was also talk about how well the World Cup would go as an event.

Perhaps that has filtered down to the team. Either way, hopefully we can put them under more pressure when we come up against them.

Here in Barbados, there are plenty of people over from England who are going to be interested in the next few games.

We have not had massive support in the grounds from the locals anyway. Whether they will now lose interest even more I'm not sure.

Obviously the tickets have been overpriced for the locals and we have not seen that normal Caribbean atmosphere in the grounds.

Barbados is a beautiful island and the ground looks absolutely magnificent, which is a surprise to me as I was here last year on holiday and it looked like a farmer's field.

Jacques Kallis looms large for England in their 17 April match

I think we will be well supported for the three games we have here, against Bangladesh, South Africa and West Indies.

We have to win all those three matches, which will obviously be tough.

Bangladesh have beaten South Africa so that will be a difficult game, but we have played pretty well against the so-called minnows so far.

Then we progress to the two bigger games, before what we hope is a semi-final place.

We have shown in defeats to Australia and Sri Lanka that if we get our game together in all areas we are going to be a serious threat.

We have played some great one-day cricket so far. There have been some great partnerships and some great spells with the ball, but we have not put it all together in 100 overs.

What we do know is that if we can do so - consistently - from now on, we can we can go home with a very nice prize in our hands.