Posted by 
An excellent all-round performance from Paul Collingwood: 3-43 with the ball and 70 not out off 50 balls. If it were Andrew Flintoff with those figures, everyone’d be giggling, dribbling and getting all rambunctious. They’d be saying ‘bring on the Aussies’ like morons due to the lack of blood supply to their brains.
But it wasn’t Andrew Flintoff. It was Paul Collingwood. So instead everyone’s just saying ‘they’ll probably lose the next one’.
Paul Collingwood’s great. Not every pitch suits his bowling, but when he’s an option he bowls that brand of ‘slow, slower, slowest, QUICK ONE’ bowling that’s served one-day bowlers so well for years. And he bowls it well.
When batting, his default approach is to plonk the ball into gaps and sprint to the other end, but he’s got another gear as well, which he showed at the death today. A lot of batsmen pace their innings so that they gradually increase their scoring rate. Paul Collingwood seems to just flick a switch. ‘Enable boundary-hitting’.
He’s done it often enough now that it shouldn’t be at all a surprise, but he’s still not seen as an aggressive batsman. Perhaps it’s because he can actually play in another way as well – to be an aggressive batsman do you have to be an out-and-out slogger? Today saw Paul Collingwood’s 37th, 38th and 39th sixes in one-day internationals anyway.
It was a day for all-round captains all-round. Daniel Vettori hit 42 off 35 balls and took 2-23 off ten. That shouldn’t be a performance in defeat, but it was, because of Paul Collingwood’s gingerial splendour.
England’s all-rounder is a man of steadfast bits and exceptional pieces these days.
New Zealand v England, third one-day international at Auckland
New Zealand 234-9 (Jacob Oram 88, Stuart Broad 3-32, Paul Collingwood 3-43)
England 229-4 (Ian Bell 73, Paul Collingwood 70)
England win as a result of Duckworth-Lewis calculations
And both captains seem to be all-round good eggs.
all-round captains, in all-round performances, who are all-round good blokes.
Allround, it’s a good day!
I wonder if I can find the “Enable boundary-hitting” switch, on me.
I seem to have lost it in a drunken haze.. Either that, or my daughter has decided to hide it with my wallett, keys, and the remote control.
I have a deranged amount of love for Collingwood!
That’s not enough.
Another reason for liking Collingwood (as if any more were needed) is that he has resisted the temptation to cover his head with blonde highlights.
Paul Collingwood MBE: Greatest. Living. Ginger.
FACT.
Bingo!!
there are some players who are like cursed that their contributions are not going to be acknowledged than certain other players…like you mentioned flintoff…
players like collingwood are of rare genre who does their job quietly but surely without seeking or getting acclaims for thier efforts in return…we must applaud them and encourage them…
Probot.
We thought probots had honed, textbook techniques derived from hours and hours of practice.
They don’t work the ball to leg like a man shovelling coal down t’pit, do they?
That’s the best description I’ve ever read, about Captain Colly’s technique..
It should be his epitaph.
At least our women have given a good account of themselves in that part of the world, having just retained the Ashes in Australia.