Maturing Colly set for second chance

Andy Flower claims Paul Collingwood will benefit from his previous stint as captain when he takes charge again

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Team director Andy Flower is confident Paul Collingwood’s experience of captaincy will stand him in good stead when he leads England in the World Twenty20.

The Durham all-rounder resigned as captain of the one-day and Twenty20 sides almost a year ago after admitting the responsibility had affected his form in Test cricket.

However, he will resume the role next week when England open the World Twenty20 with a clash against Holland at Lord's next Friday.

It represents a major turnaround for Collingwood, who struggled during the inaugural World Twenty20 in South Africa two years ago, and misjudged the overs to such an extent against New Zealand that he failed to give Andrew Flintoff his full quota despite his being England's most economical bowler.

Collingwood also had a mixed record as Twenty20 captain, leading them to a solitary victory, over Zimbabwe in the last World Twenty20, but Flower believes he will be much better for the experience this time around.

“I think a couple of things have changed for him now,” said Flower. “Firstly, it's only Twenty20 cricket he's captaining in and, secondly, he's got the experience of giving it a go initially and that will hold him in very good stead.

“I remember I captained the Zimbabwe side in two different spells and I would have been a much better captain in the second spell than I was in the first. I'm sure that will be the case with him. He will have learnt a lot.

“He's a slightly different cricketer to the one he was last time he captained, though. He's certainly in much better form and feels more confident in himself and he's also experienced the IPL - not playing but watching - and in a way he may have seen much more by doing that.

“He's also pretty comfortable with his knowledge of the game, which is a nice place to be. We have chatted, we have ideas of the sort of side we want, and he's got pretty clear ideas of how he wants to go about stuff.”

For all Flower's support for Collingwood, the coach admits he would prefer to be working with one captain for all teams - a situation prevented by Andrew Strauss’ decision to opt out of consideration for Twenty20 cricket.

Andrew Strauss has been excused Twenty20 duty, but Flower says England will cope with the change in leadership

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It leaves England with a split captaincy situation they would prefer to avoid, but Flower does not believe it will disrupt the harmony in the squad in the build-up to the Ashes.

“I don't think it will disturb things, but I also don't think it's ideal,” admitted Flower. “In an ideal world you'd have one captain, but I think Colly is really looking forward to it.

“He's looking forward to the challenge and I think it might work okay. I hope we play similar cricket that we have recently in the Twenty20 game and one of our challenges is now to mould a few different faces into the unit as well so that's pretty exciting.”

Strauss is comfortable playing the 50-over format once again and looking optimistically to the future following the emphatic series win over West Indies.

“I'm happy with my own contributions,” said Strauss, “I'm happy with the way the team is forming and I definitely think there is a role for my type of player in 50-over cricket.

“That excites me both from a personal performance point of view but also from a captaincy point of view to see a pretty young, vibrant team all going out and expressing themselves.

“Our one-day cricket has been a little bit haphazard in the past and it just looks like it's getting a bit more consistent at the moment and that's encouraging.”

Flower, though, is aware of the need to separate the next three weeks of the World Twenty20 tournament from the bigger challenge ahead.

As the Ashes loom, that task will become harder, but Flower said: “The West Indies are a proud cricketing nation with a great history and our job was to beat them and we've done that very well and very convincingly.

“We will obviously have a few thoughts about the challenges in the second half of the summer, but one of your skills as a sportsman is to be able to focus one thing at a time, and now we'll move on very quickly and focus on that Twenty20 challenge.”