Paul Collingwood: The Unspoken Hero

This past weekend Paul Collingwood became the highest capped England Player passing Alec Stewart's record of 170 caps and what a way to do it, by scoring an unbeaten century, taking a couple of wickets and an outstanding catch (although I suppose the last one was nothing new because he seems to have made a career out of breathtaking catches).

It was a weird kind of game with England bowling first and bowling well for a change and restricting South Africa to 250-9 with both Paul Collingwood and Jonathan Trott bowling brilliantly with a combined set of figures of 13-0-45-2. Unfortunately for Trott the skipper was on bad form with his catching mitts dropping 3 chances, including 2 of the easiest catches that I have ever seen which cost him his first International Wicket.

When it came to chasing down the total it was the same 2 of Collingwood and Trott combining for a 3rd wicket partnership of 162 with Paul Collingwood finishing unbeaten on 105 and Jonathan Trott just missing out on a maiden One Day International Century after falling for a composed 87 before Eoin Morgan came in and finished the job off.

So with the next game on Friday and England 1-0 up it will be interesting to see if they can keep this good run of form going or if they will go back to their usual of 1 good game followed by 1 poor game. However we can always hope that we will be able to challenge the South Africans not only in this series but also in the Test Match Series that follows after.

Elsewhere in India it's the second match of the Test Series between them and Sri Lanka, and after the first one petered out in to a draw where almost 1600 runs where scored for the loss of just 21 wickets over the 5 days we were hopeful that we would get a pitch where a result would be possible but shortly after tea on Day One India where 366-1 which doesn't hold out much hope for the next 4 days.