ALEC STEWART is about to enter his fourth World Cup, in which he will attempt to help to arrest a serious slump in England’s fortunes since they reached the final in his first tournament 11 years ago. This will be his last opportunity to win the biggest prize in the game. Next time around Stewart will be 43 and even this greatest of survivors concedes that West Indies 2007 is beyond his reach.

It was not intended that he should be here at all. When the selectors looked forward in the aftermath of the previous World Cup in 1999, he was out of their vision. With Stewart at the helm, England had failed to progress beyond the first stage and, when the squad was named for the winter one-day programme in South Africa, he found himself omitted to accommodate a younger man, Chris Read.

The 1999 campaign represented a catalogue of mistakes and Stewart paid the penalty. “It was typically English,” he reflected. “The attitude seemed to be how we could help everybody else instead of working out how we could use home advantage to give ourselves the best chance.”

Having returned from an Australia tour that culminated in England pipping Sri Lanka for a place in the one-day finals before losing 2-0 to the hosts, the squad was directed to the desert heat of Sharjah in April for a triangular series against India and Pakistan. In alien conditions, they not only lost three out of four games but missed valuable practice time back at home.

“That trip was hardly ideal for a tournament in England in May and June,” Stewart said with deliberate understatement. “But it wasn’t just that, it was everything. We wanted to train at Leicester because that is where the best net facilities were. Instead we ended down at Canterbury. We had to fit in around the visitors instead of it being the other way around.”

A dispute over contracts that came to a head in Sharjah did nothing to foster trust between the players and the ECB, although Stewart does not think that the matter ultimately had a bearing on performances. That Richard Bevan is acting for the players on the Zimbabwe issue is one legacy of those uneasy few weeks.

“It is not a player or players who are looked upon as troubleshooters or the shop steward, which was the case before the previous World Cup,” Stewart said. His own involvement four years ago undoubtedly contributed towards his removal from the captaincy. “A poor one-day performance results in a change of Test captaincy? The people at the ECB can give the answers and the reasons why.”

His initial World Cup experience was far happier, at least until Wasim Akram began to swing the old ball to devastating effect in the final at Melbourne in which Pakistan beat England by 22 runs. In those days, Stewart, along with Graeme Hick and Chris Lewis, was among the younger players who complemented the experience of Graham Gooch, Allan Lamb and Ian Botham in a perfectly balanced team.

“That was a fine side,” Stewart said, “the best I have played in. We were the best in the tournament until the final. As Englishmen you never exactly play a lot of one-day games, but that team had a lot of international cricket behind it. We were pretty settled and genuinely thought we were going to win.”

Four years later the squad went to the sub-continent having endured a long, arduous tour of South Africa, which ended in a 6-1 defeat in the one-day series. That England experimented with five opening pairings in those matches underlines the lack of planning ahead of the bigger event that stemmed, in part, from the lack of interest that Ray Illingworth, as manager, had in the shorter form of the game. “We got to the quarter-finals but we didn’t really compete,” Stewart said. “Really, I think it simply came down to a lack of planning.” A tired and stale England side were thrashed by the bubbly Sri Lankans in the quarter-finals.

Ominously, England appeared dispirited little more than a week ago, when they lost to Australia by ten wickets in Sydney. The subsequent, narrow defeat in Melbourne offered more hope and Stewart believes that the short break at Sun City has allowed a line to be drawn under the disappointments of the past 3½ months.

“This will be my last World Cup — no question about that — and I am desperately keen to do well,” he said. “I never gave up having another go at the tournament. Getting here is another goal achieved, but that doesn’t mean much unless you go on and give it your best. I want us to do really well. If we have the luck we are probably due with injuries I don’t see why we can’t do that.”