The English are coming.

By Neal Collins

So. Cape Town. Table Mountain, Robben Island, The Waterfront, Newlands - where England will beat Pakistan on Saturday night.

They have no choice.

Everybody on flight SA221 was in agreement on that, though they spent all night bickering over other facets of England's World Cup saga, which has yet to begin in earnest.

The 350 passengers, 99.9 percent England cricket fans (there was one family of unfortunate South Africans travelling home amid the cacophony of "Blah, blah, Zimbabwe, blah, blah, Hussain, blah, blah, Trescothick, blah, blah, no bloody chance against Australia, blah, blah") landed in South Africa's oldest city full of hope.

And a rather scrummy South African Airways breakfast.

Set up by the Dutch East India company as a feeding station in 1734, Cape Town still nourishes all nationalities passing the Cape of Good Hope.

There'll be plenty of replenishment needed this week.

The British are here in astonishing numbers, as they were for the 1997 Lions rugby tour and the Millennium Test. I hesitate to use the term Barmy Army as the collective noun for these people.

Many of the England followers squirm at the mention of the now-world-renowned cricket fans with "have it" flags and specially-written chants.

The couple next to me are typical of the direct fliers to Cape Town. John and Rosemary, sixtysomething from Mumbles Cricket Club, are travelling with Gullivers. Others are with Sports Abroad and my lot, BAC Sport

Where the Barmy Army are paying £1,600 for a three-city cricket break, these guys are prepared to pay double that to guarantee comfort and quiet.

This is the upper end of the market: expensive, greying, knowledgeable. Not so much a Barmy Army, more of a Pleasant Platoon: placid, pensioners, paying plenty, playing peacefully and many other p-words.

Arriving in Cape Town via cheap, indirect flights (some have come via Holland, others Greece, one worried lot through Turkey) are the genuine, scruffier legions of the Barmy Army. Not a lot of people know this, but I'm assured the terrifying sound of the warring orcs in the Lord of the Rings films is based on recordings taken of the Army during England's tour of New Zealand two winters hence.

I saw no orcs among the gathering masses on the spectacular V&A Waterfront in Cape Town on Thursday, though I thought I glimpsed at least three Hobbits, two Elves, a Dark Rider and Gandalf (he was the one magically drinking beer, singing and waving his St George's flag all at once, while balancing on one foot with his finger up his nose). I'm not sure who I'd rather be on tour with. The Placid Platoon are off golfing, game watching and, I imagine, gin drinking, between the three big England games against Pakistan, India and Australia.

The Barmy Army appear to have no set schedule of events, the general plan appears to be "take it as it comes" with "recovering from hangover" pencilled in on a regular basis in the Barmy Diary.

Like the Pleasant Platoon, they've travelled 6,000 miles to see England's Mission Improbable. Both groups look likely to go home disappointed.

Still, can't be too pessimistic when you've just landed at the Cape of Good Hope can you?