Graphic: All you need to know about $20m match

So the die has been cast. Kevin Pietersen revealed his hand at poolside early yesterday morning, dressed in Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, a Joker-like smile never far from his face. If he had spent the night agonising over the decision of who to leave out of today's winner-takes-all $20million (about £12.4million) clash, it was not apparent. The unlucky quartet is James Anderson, Ravi Bopara, Alastair Cook and Ryan Sidebottom.

Can we call them unlucky? Sympathy will be tempered by the knowledge that for warming up, ferrying drinks and acting as general dogsbodies for the day, they will each pick up $250,000 - should their team-mates be victorious, of course. Despite this, spare a thought for Anderson, the unluckiest of the four.

Anderson, a slip of a lad in life terms, is a veteran one-day cricketer for England. Since his debut six years ago, he has played in 97 one-day internationals and boasts an economy rate of less than five, the benchmark of a good one-day bowler. True, his rate in Twenty20 is much higher - whose isn't? - at 8.25, and this, that he was unconvincing in his only game here this week and the nature of the pitch, have probably counted against him.

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• Graphic: All you need to know about $20m match

But this will be a bitter pill to swallow because Anderson, 26, has played the past 40 one-day internationals, the same number of consecutive games as his captain, both of them last missing a one-day international in February 2007, in Sydney.

Sentimentality counts for nothing. Fielding, too, it would seem is irrelevant because Anderson is among England's most athletic movers and safest catchers. Later, in the press conference, Pietersen was asked who he would most like to see under a skyer to win the dough and Anderson was the first name he mentioned.

Of the others, Sidebottom has been walking around all week with his left calf strapped, and is short of match practice and match fitness, so his omission is no surprise. Pietersen described Sidebottom's fitness as only “touch and go”. As for the young Essex pair, Bopara and Cook, no one expected them to play. Pietersen seems to have a blind spot as far as Bopara is concerned, even though he is, in my estimation, a better cricketer than, say, Luke Wright. Bopara's time will come.

The blind spot belongs to the selectors where Cook and one-day cricket are concerned. His presence here this week has been viewed with the same incredulity as Sarah Palin's nomination for vice-president: one potentially just a heartbeat away from the presidency of the most powerful nation on earth; the other a stomach bug away from a pay day in Twenty20 cricket. Unbelievable.

The biggest beneficiaries of the selection process are Stephen Harmison, Wright and Graeme Swann. Harmison's selection is no surprise, and fully merited on recent form. His return to one-day cricket has been a well-timed one. But for that, Anderson would certainly be playing. If they were in each other's vicinity last night, Harmy would have been wise to employ a food taster and keep his rum and coke out of Anderson's reach.

Wright has been so invisible this week that his WAG - one of those seen to be enjoying Allen Stanford's charms - has enjoyed more photos and column inches than he has. He has not batted or bowled, except in practice, and even then he has not been always present, suffering from the dreaded bug.

“Luke hasn't done anything right this week, but then again he hasn't done anything wrong. There is going to come a time when we need the kind of strength in depth that he gives us,” Pietersen said, struggling to sound convinced. There is a feeling, although it is based on precious little evidence, that Wright enjoys what the pros call a BMT - big-match temperament - and will revel under the unique pressure that tonight's match will bring.

Swann has benefited from the conditions, which, in all but the most recent warm-up match between Middlesex and the Stanford Superstars, have favoured spin. Having not considered two spinners as part of their game plan at the start of the week, this is a change of tack. I wonder, though, if England realise how different that pitch for the final warm-up match (the one that will be used today) was from those earlier in the week. It was hard, flat and shiny - the kind on which a spinner could go the distance.

Still, you will find no one here holding a grudge against Swann. He has been one of the few England players to take wholeheartedly to this whole thing, propping up the bar at night, cracking jokes, doing passable impersonations of all and sundry and generally having a good time. He is cut from the same cloth as Chris Gayle, the Superstars captain.

While Swann has had his eyes on a pink Ferrari from the moment this match was touted, Gayle replied to a question about what he would do with the money, simply: “Spend it, man.” In these straitened times, the high street needs all the help it can get.