Size matters to Collingwood

Paul Collingwood has had a lot of success © Getty Images

Paul Collingwood admits he has been forced to adapt his run-scoring strategy on the smaller Caribbean grounds.

The Durham all-rounder has become an expert at running between the wickets, putting pressure on the fielders and turning ones into twos and twos into threes during a one-day career spanning 114 appearances for England.

But the smaller nature of the World Cup venues, particularly at the Beausejour Stadium in St Lucia where England play all three of their Group C matches, has restricted the opportunity for Collingwood to use those tactics.

"I've certainly found out in the first couple of games that I wasn't picking as many twos and threes up, and that is what gets you those big scores by converting the ones into twos," he explained.

"You do have to try and get a few more boundaries now and then earlier on in your innings.

"I'm not saying you have to take risks, but you need to identify your areas a lot more because you're not picking those extra runs up."

That was certainly evident during Sunday's victory over Canada, when Collingwood hit 62 off 44 balls, including four fours and a six, to win the man of the match award.

He expects similar conditions when England face Kenya on Saturday knowing that victory or the game being washed out will secure their progress into the last eight for the first time since 1996.

Running between the wickets has been a big feature for Collingwood © Getty Images

"The pitches are slower and you haven't got as many options for picking your ones up either, so that puts you under pressure and when you're fielding you have to do it to the opposition batsmen too," he said.

"Against Canada you could see us bring the field up straight away and apply pressure that way by saying 'if you want to go for your big shots then you go for it' and it is very hard to go for it when you first get in."

England have so far struggled to impress in the tournament having lost their opening match to New Zealand and then toiled to overcome group minnows Canada.

With the crunch-time of the tournament still to come with the Super Eight stage, when England would face the qualifiers from the other three groups, they are well aware their performance levels need to improve.

He said: "Hopefully we'll be able to expand a little bit on that performance against Canada. After the events that happened the victory was the thing we needed to do on that particular day, no matter what the performance was like.

"The victory was the important thing and we wanted to win it, get that game out of the way and hopefully during this tournament we can express ourselves more in each game.

"We want a better performance than last week but the victory is the important thing in the end.

"As the tournament goes on hopefully that confidence and that expression which we talk about all the time will gradually come out and we'll become a better side because of it."

Captain Michael Vaughan successfully came through yesterday's training session after suffering an injury scare earlier this week, when he had ice treatment on his right knee after tripping in a pot-hole during fielding practice.

Key seamer James Anderson also returned to training after resting his broken right little finger during the practice earlier this week.