Sparkling Collingwood Graduates With a First

It is not many weeks since Paul Collingwood was summoned from Melbourne grade cricket to stand by for his debut in the third Test. The selection was greeted locally with some derision: a clubby in the Test? How low can the side go?

So his maiden international century yesterday afternoon, one of the most accomplished scored by an England batsman for some while in limited-overs cricket and a diamond among the costume jewellery on display, goes some way to rectifying the misapprehension. The boy can play.

The Durham batsman, who earlier this winter lost his place in the side through injury in Sri Lanka, made 100 before being dismissed from the last ball of England's innings as Sri Lanka, fingers utterly butterly, contrived to produce a display of fielding that bordered on the comical.

Asked to make 259 to win, the Sri Lankans were never in the game once they had lost four wickets inside the first dozen overs of their reply, three of them to Andy Caddick before he limped off with a twisted ankle. "Disappointing," said the Sri Lankan coach Dav Whatmore. "Disappointing," volunteered the captain Sanath Jayasuriya glumly, "as Dav said: disappointing."

The weather was extreme in Perth yesterday morning: ice on the windscreens, a hard frost underfoot. It was pretty unpleasant in Western Australia too, not just hot, but, to misquote Dickie Bird, hot hot. 40-plus degree heat, with a wind like a fan-assisted oven so that anyone could put the Christmas turkey on the pavement and expect it to be done to a turn inside a few hours.

Until later, when the Fremantle Doctor began the house calls to cool things down a little, it was no weather for the intensity that limited- overs cricket demands.

It showed too, England completing their second successive win over Sri Lanka by 95 runs - a margin comfortable enough to give them a maximum six points and elevate them to the unaccustomed heady heights of table-topping Poms - but lacking lustre with careless batting and sloppy ground fielding.

These things, as Nasser Hussain is sufficiently clued up to appreciate, are relative. His side bowled well enough on the bounciest pitch in the game to ensure that Sri Lanka, never at their best in such circumstances and due to play Australia on the same surface tomorrow, would have a rough time of chasing the target to register their first win.

But catches were missed and a lightheartedness crept in which will not serve them well when next they come up against Ricky Ponting's outfit, who had spent the afternoon practising in the Waca nets. The strip that Hussain tore off his side in the immediate aftermath of Caddick's third wicket, was by no means misplaced. The game allows no room for complacency, least of all from an England side that has scarcely excelled this winter.

Collingwood got them out of jail at a time when the innings appeared on the point of collapse against aggressive bowling from Chaminda Vaas and the fierce Dilhara Fernando. If the Sri Lankans' abysmal catching let them down in frustrating fashion for the bowlers, then Collingwood certainly capitalised.

Missed in straightforward fashion by Thilan Samaraweera at slip when, 11 having got off the mark with a four and a six, he demonstrated a level of composure and common sense not exhibited by his colleagues until a seventh-wicket stand of 110 with Craig White (48) rectified things and built a winning total.

This was a busy innings from Collingwood, accumulative, sensible, biding his time, always keeping things ticking. Only once did he break the mould when, for reasons apparent to no one, he suddenly stepped two paces down the pitch and hit Vaas over wide long-on and into the Inverarity stand for six. He then immediately went back into his groove.

One day, when he is a cynical old pro, he will look back and wonder why he smeared the last ball of the innings to backward point. But a single had given him his hundred in the same over, scored from 125 balls with only four fours and two sixes, and a World Cup place beckons now.

Caddick, bowling into the wind, the better to settle into a length, bowled aggressively and well as he had done earlier against Western Australia. But he was abetted by some miserable strokeplay that did little to dispel the notion that the Sri Lankans do not have the technique to cope with the extra bounce offered by Perth.

Typical of the way they seem to be treated in Australia, they have been given back-to-back matches at the Waca now and, when next they tour Australia to play Tests, will play at Perth again and Brisbane rather than Sydney or Melbourne where Muttiah Muralitharan might run riot.

From 46 for four there was little way back if England kept their discipline. Mahele Jayawardene flourished for a while, as did Samaraweera, while Russel Arnold, who had shown little inclination to try to win the last match in Brisbane, did so again, top-scoring with 44 but taking 82 balls to do so. If England have work to do before the World Cup, then Sri Lanka look desperate.