Tym Glaser, Associate Editor - Sport

ST JOHN'S, Antigua:

ENGLAND FINISHED off their practice match preparations for Saturday's Stanford 20/20 for 20 showdown against the Stanford Allstars with a less with than inspiring display against Trinidad and Tobago in an exciting encounter here last night.

Needing 10 runs to win off the final over and then three off the last ball with two wickets in hand, Trinidad and Tobago's quest to chase down England's 141 for six fell just a single run short when Ravi Rampaul was run out well short of his ground attempting the tying second run.

England, sent in by the team which won the Champions Cup against Middlesex the night before - and US$280,000 - made what seemed to be a par score and, in the end, it only just held up.

Brisk batting

Skipper Kevin Pietersen led the way for England with a brisk 44 off 30 balls with three sixes and opener Ian Bell compiled 37.

But the Englishmen still seemed to struggle to come to grips with a relatively slow pitch, sluggish outfield and sensible bowling and field placements.

Despite hitting as many sixes as fours (six), they were not clear if they wanted to go the aerial or terrestrial route for their runs and only looked like getting away when Pietersen and Bell put on 48 for the fourth wicket in 4.2 overs.

However, when Bell fell in the 14th over with the score on 100, the run rate dipped again.

Part-time offspinner Sherwin Ganga was the surprise star with the ball for T&T, claiming 4-23 off his four overs.

Perhaps more impressive but wicketless was Monday night's Man of the Match and US$20,000 winner, Rampaul.

He suffered a spell of 'no-ballitis' in his penultimate over, but England failed to capitalise and he returned solid figures of 0-27 off his four overs.

Learning material

His line and back-of-a-length bowling troubled all the batsmen who faced him and should provide good learning material for the likes of Superstars' pacemen Jerome Taylor and Daren Powell for Saturday's match for US$20 million.

In the field, Pietersen chose to chop and change his attack and opened with left-arm spinner Samit Patel.

Lanky paceman Steve Harmison, who missed the first match due to injury, bowled at a lively pace on his way to figures of 1-29 which included the dangerous Denesh Ramdin when the match was titling towards T&T, while nagging medium pacer Paul Collingwood upstaged his Durham teammate with a tidy return of 2-11 off his four overs and Andrew Flintoff claimed 3-29.

Ramdin (37 off 36 balls), Lendl Simmons (21), Darren Bravo (15) and Sherwin Ganga (14) all got starts for Trinidad and Tobago, but were unable to find that extra run which could have turned into a morale-jolting loss for the Englishmen, who rested the pace trio of Chris Broad, Ryan Sidebottom and James Anderson.