Paul Collingwood faces a daunting task ahead of the ODI series
England’s struggling middle order batsman, Paul Collingwood would be facing a daunting challenge to keep his place in the One Day squad of his country's cricket team.
The batsman, who used to be the backbone of England’s batting lineup, failed to leave a mark in the Ashes, which the English won in Australia after 24 years. Collingwood managed to score just 83 runs in the five match series after which he ultimately announced
his retirement from the five day version of the game.
Before the beginning of the Ashes, many former English and Australian cricketers had labelled Collingwood as England’s Achilles heel during the tour of Australia.
Collingwood, last week, led the team in the two match Twenty20 series, where he could score only 16 runs in the first match in Adelaide and just 6 runs in the second T20, played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
However, Test and ODI skipper, Andrew Strauss expressed his full confidence in the middle order batsman and stressed that Collingwood would find his form well in time before the Cricket World Cup in the Indian sub-continent next month. He said, "He's been
a bit out of touch in the Test matches, but it's a very different form of the game. His record in One-Day cricket, over the last year, has been very good (500 runs at 35.71 in 16 matches)". Justifying Collingwood’s place in the squad, Strauss said, "His batting
is crucial to us. We're expecting him to come back strong. He's a resilient bloke. There have been plenty of instances in the past where he has come back with a bang".
The http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760, in 2007, where he averaged 46.00 runs per match. Strauss hoped that his middle order batsman would manage to find the same form in the upcoming
World Cup.
England are due to name their 15-member World Cup squad on Wednesday and Collingwood is expected to make it in the team, however, with the resurgence of Kevin Pietersen and the prolific form of Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott, Collingwood may face a tough time
justifying his selection.
Speaking on the matter, the English skipper further said, "There's a lot of competition for places. Kevin Pietersen's back in the squad and we all know what he can bring to the One-Day team. Someone's got to miss out, out of the batsmen. It will be a tough
call, but I think that's a good position to be in... They all bring different attributes to their game- you have to include Paul Collingwood in the mix as well, and we have to decide what's the best use of those attributes in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 and at the World Cup
as well.
Collingwood was hopeful that he would get his form back again. He said, "Things go around in cycles in terms of form- be it on a personal note or a team note... It just takes that one score to come around"
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