Stand-in captain Alec Stewart did his best to be upbeat after England's less-than-convincing win over World Cup minnows Namibia.

England eventually won by 55 runs, although they looked in danger of being embarrassed at one stage as Jamie Burger (85) and Daniel Keulder (46) built a substantial third-wicket partnership.

"They were keen as mustard from ball one, but 270 on a slow wicket is a score we'd have taken at the start obviously," said Stewart, who'd been asked to captain the side by Duncan Fletcher two hours before the game when Nasser Hussain's neck injury was still troubling him.

"A win's a win," Stewart added. "It's four points in the bag and we won by a good margin in one-day cricket. You have to give credit to the opposition, they relished the challenge and the run chase, but at the end of the day we won and we won well.

As far as England's injury worries go, Stewart said more would be known in the next 24 hours: "Nasser Hussain has had a (neck) problem for 36 hours, but we have a good physio in Dean Conway and hopefully he will be right for the next game on Saturday (against Pakistan).

"Ian Blackwell (back) is lying on a bed with ice pack on. We want the full 15 fit so we can pick our strongest XI for Saturday. But you've got to accept these things. We're a closely-knit squad and the happenings of the last few weeks have brought us together.

"We've got three really big ones to play in Australia, India and Pakistan, but we've played two, won two and if we continue that we've got a great chance of getting into the Super Sixes."

20 Feb, 2003