IF any cricket World Cup team can claim to have a psychological edge over an opponent, then it must be Alistair Campbell’s Zimbabwe over Alec Stewart’s England. The African side, who only joined the Test-playing nations seven years ago, are England’s jinx team, having won five of the six one-dayers between them. Worse still for the tournament hosts, they go into Tuesday’s crunch match against Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge fresh from being decimated by South Africa. That 122-run defeat – or “hammering”, as chief selector David Graveney put it – was so bruising that England have asked sports psychologist Steve Bull to set up his couch in case the players feel they need help to cope with the Oval trauma. Zimbabwe coach David Houghton, meanwhile, has been indulging in some reverse psychology of his own, lambasting his team for lacking the killer instinct.
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