Collingwood Tackles Batting Blues With Flower Power

Paul Collingwood laughed when he was asked if he had ever been in such bad form before. "You know, I have," he said. He made it sound inevitable, like asking a postman if he had ever been bitten by a dog, or wondering whether a politician had ever avoided a question.

His most draining experience came in Australia two winters ago, when he went 10 one-day matches without a fifty and Shane Warne had enough material about his supposed shortcomings to fill an after-dinner routine. If you are a Collingwood admirer, do not worry too much if you missed it.

He then hit consecutive one-day centuries against New Zealand and Australia and England went on to win the Commonwealth Bank Series. Warne was silenced. What did Collingwood do differently?

"I changed my bat handle to pink," he said. As he went on to smite the ball to all parts, breast cancer awareness had never had so much publicity.

For anybody planning an awareness day while England face New Zealand at Trent Bridge in the third Test, beginning tomorrow, Collingwood might just be the man. Tomorrow he could easily opt for Support Our Soldiers Awareness Week and march to the crease with military bearing, because there has always been the hint of the armed forces about a cricketer who responds to orders with a sense of purpose. British Heart Week is also worthy of consideration - he has never been short of ticker.

He had made 39 runs in seven innings in all competitions this season before his scratchy, unbeaten 24 guided England to victory in the second Test, the sort of innings that got him through the week unscathed without removing the sensation that he was living a hand-to-mouth existence. "Getting the last 50 runs to win a match would never have looked pretty for me," he said. "Even if I was in good form in that situation it would still have looked scratchy. Because I was out of form a little bit, it looked a lot worse. But we did what we had to do and got over the line."

Rather than search for form with Durham in the past week, Collingwood chose to miss their championship match against Sussex at Hove. Instead, he had a few days off and then spent two days in Durham with England's batting coach, Andy Flower.

"In international cricket there has never been much time to work on things technically," he said. "I had two very good sessions in Durham with Andy, not just working on the game but talking about the game as much as anything else. Sometimes that works better than anything else.

"You don't want to get your mind clouded by technique. You go back to basics and what works best for you. What you are trying to do sometimes is to get your mind into a place where you are feeling confident and refreshed."

There have even been suggestions that he should have taken his bad form as an invitation for surgery on his shoulder, which he has previously dislocated, and for which he has already needed an injection this summer. That sounded too much like sounding the retreat, especially with his captaincy of the one-day side looming again.

"I honestly don't think I'm in that bad nick to think I should get operations done just for the sake of it," he said. "The shoulder feels 100%. I have been working hard on it and I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will be fine once the injection wears off.

"I am focused on making big runs for England - not running away from things by saying that I need an operation."