Collingwood pleased as punch

Paul Collingwood marshals his England team in the field

Buy this photo

Paul Collingwood hailed an “excellent performance” from England as they overwhelmed New Zealand by nine wickets in the NatWest Twenty20 at Old Trafford.

And Collingwood insisted none of the players had been distracted by the mega-bucks game against the West Indies all stars in November which is being bankrolled by Sir Allen Stanford.

England restricted the Kiwis to their lowest ever Twenty20 total - 123 for nine - and then Ian Bell (60 not out) and Kevin Pietersen (46no) saw them home to victory with 15 balls to spare.

Collingwood said: “It was an excellent performance. Simple as that. From ball one, the guys seemed to hit their lengths and do a bit with the ball.

“We took a couple of early wickets and we give a lot of credit to Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad for the way they set the tone for the whole match.

“It was a very professional, a very clinical performance. There are no negatives I can take from the game.

“The way Belly (Bell) and ‘KP’ (Pietersen) finished it off was excellent after the way Wrighty (Luke Wright) had started off the innings.”

Collingwood added: “There has been talk in the dressing room about the Stanford game, obviously. But we have got a very professional bunch of guys in that dressing room and what they wanted to do was win tonight’s game.

“November 1, when that game takes place, is a long way off and a lot can happen between now and then. We all realise that. We have won three Twenty20s on the trot now and tonight was the best performance we’ve had in the Twenty20.

“You can’t get away from the fact that it is a massive game for us in November. Of course, there has been talk. But what they have done is put a professional performance in. There have been no distractions whatsoever.

“If anything it has been a positive for us and got the best out of us.

“I am not saying that because of the carrot that lies ahead, we played well tonight. We played pretty well in the Twenty20s in New Zealand. Tonight everything came together.

“I’m not saying it was because of the November 1 fixture. Tonight everybody knew their roles. Everything just clicked together.”

New Zealand’s misery was compounded by the loss of all-rounder Jacob Oram before the game with a hamstring injury suffered in the warm-up.

He will miss the first part of the NatWest one-day series which begins at Durham on Sunday.

Daniel Vettori made no excuses for his team's ineptitude

Kiwi skipper Daniel Vettori said: “It’s a huge blow to us because Jacob is one of the best all-rounders in the world so any time you lose him makes it tough to recover from it.

“I think he’s out for about seven to 10 days so he could be a struggle for the rest of the one-day series.

“He is very disappointed because he targeted this series as an opportunity to show how good a player he is. It is hard for him. He works pretty hard so it’s frustrating for him.”

However, Vettori refused to use Oram’s absence as an excuse for an inept performance by his side who have now lost seven Twenty20 internationals on the trot.

He said: “When you’re presented with situations like that, you expect one or two guys to pick it up and no-one did that today and that was the problem.

“We were World Cup semi-finalists in the Twenty20 and we should probably have won that semi-final.

“But we have had seven losses, a couple of them close ones. I wouldn’t say we’re struggling at this format but we’re certainly not putting the performances together that we can at the moment.”