England must beat Bevan

Because to them, Bevan's reputation as arguably the finest batsman ever in the one-day game and surely its best "finisher", the bloke they count on above any other to guide them to victory in the dying overs of a challenging run chase, remains undiminished, even if he's almost appeared to have become their forgotten man.

Of course, such is their strength, they'd earlier not appeared to miss him. When Bevan was injured for the first game against Pakistan, the only one where they endured the slightest hint of a problem, it was the much-derided Andrew Symonds who came to the party with a towering unbeaten century. When they destroyed India, they only needed the sublime opening partnership of Adam Gilchrist and Hayden to batter them home and, with a cool head needed to finally see off Zimbabwe, it was Lehmann who stepped up.

If Australia beat England, it will be their 12th successive one-day international victory, moving Ponting's men past the 11-win world record posted by the West Indies team of 1984-85, the nonpareil outfit which could boast Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes for starters, Viv Richards for the main course and then Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner and Michael Holding for afters.

Yet once the going gets tougher in the Super Six stage, the likelihood is that they are at some point going to depend on a Bevan special. Over nine years, in which he's scored more than 6,000 oneday runs with six hundreds at an unprecedented average of nearly 55 - Australia have long become used to seeing his Thunderbird rescue acts through a specialist skill which Waugh believes carries the stamp of "genius".

"In time, he may well go down as the greatest one-day player in the history of the game and be revered in much the same way as Don Bradman is for Test cricket. He is the Pyjama Picasso, capable of creating a masterpiece each time he straps on the pads," drooled Waugh before the last World Cup.

"They say the Don was a player ahead of his time and Bevan is also one to fit that category."

He has had no cause for reassessment. Down the years, Bevan has played countless matchwinning innings under pressure while displaying such amazing coolness and improvisation that it has almost appeared as if he was busy reinventing the art.

Even at 32, with his lightning running and uncanny ability to find gaps in the field, he'll turn ones into twos and twos into threes, driving fielding sides mad. Then, when a boundary is desperately needed, he'll always manufacture one without appearing to be taking a risk.

"He is largely successful because he has taken the word 'hopefully' out of his terminology and replaced it with 'definitely'," reckons Waugh.

His average may have been inflated by the fact that, in about a third of his innings, he ends up not out. But in many of those unbeaten knocks, he has remained there to either hammer the winning runs or accelerate the total with his impressive strike rate of about 75 runs every 100 balls.

Famously, he has also earned the tag of being a one-day wonder who can't cut it in the Test arena, with an average of 29 and a supposed weakness against fast, shortpitched stuff.

It seems a somewhat harsh tag since it's probable that, in a country without the remarkable batting depth of Australia, he'd have had more opportunities than the 18 Tests he has played. His quality in the longer game has been appreciated by Yorkshire, Sussex and Leicestershire.

Yet, though he is a multi-talented man - he may well have been a brilliant sprinter or swimmer - it's still a unique skill at turning losing cricket causes into winning ones which identify Bevan as a silent but deadly threat to England's World Cup dreams.