Collingwood confident Phil will cut the Mustard

13 April 2012

England remain convinced they have the right opening partnership for one-day cricket and will show faith in Phil Mustard while he tries to come to terms with international attacks.

Alastair Cook has shown enough to suggest he can be effective in limited overs cricket as well as his more natural longer game, but Mustard has yet to prove that he can do for England what he has done for Durham by launching their innings in spectacular style.

Yet to impress: Phil Mustard's form behind the wicket has not been matched when he has bat in hand

The unlikely pairing have yet to come off in this one-day series but will have a chance to exploit the short square boundaries of McLean Park late tonight (Tues 10pm) when England go in search of a victory that would leave this five-match series to be decided in Christchurch on Saturday. Clearly, England are in no hurry to abandon their latest experimental duo.

'The Colonel (Mustard) is one innings away from making it,' said his captain and Durham colleague Paul Collingwood after England had practised in a local park in this charming east coast art-deco city. 'He's certainly shown the potential. He hasn't scored that big innings yet but he's an aggressive player and you have to give that type of batsman a good run. It's exciting when they come off and everybody says how good they are but when they don't we can get carried away and say they're not doing it. You have to put up with some failures along the way if you feel you have the right man.'

England have long needed the right 'pinch-hitter' to give them what Sanath Jayasuriya, Adam Gilchrist and, here in New Zealand, Brendon McCullum have provided for their countries. Yet Mustard, who is likely to be replaced by Tim Ambrose for the Test series, has only shown in patches that he could be the right man for the job and needs to score at least one half-century in the two remaining matches to ease any suggestion that he could become just another hopeful who has tried and failed to give England that added extra.

Cook, meanwhile, is still learning the one-day game but has the temperament to bat through the innings, as he did at the Rose Bowl in scoring his maiden one-day international hundred against India last summer and in Sri Lanka when guiding England to the victory in Colombo that gave them the series in October. And he was batting well in the horror show at Hamilton last week until cut off in his prime by Ravi Bopara's running between the wickets.

Cook clearly is destined for a long future in Test cricket and will probably be a future captain, so it is also in England's best interests for them to encourage him to master the shorter game sooner rather than later, especially with national selector Geoff Miller going on record in saying he would prefer one England captain in future rather than two.

'We know Cook can score hundreds because he's done it early in his career for England already,' said Collingwood. 'He's very much a rock at the top of the order. We certainly don't have any plans to mix up the opening pair.

England, who are likely to be unchanged from their win in Auckland, believe they have now put behind them their awful two opening matches and are confident that they can square the series in the only day match of the five at what is another stadium used principally for rugby.

The pressure, it seems, is back on the Black Caps who face the possible distraction of their four leading players - Daniel Vettori, McCullum, Jacob Oram and Scott Styris - featuring in the auction for the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises at the same time as they are playing a crucial match in Napier.

Both the officially sanctioned IPL and its rebel Twenty20 counterpart the Indian Cricket League (ICL) are proving enticing to Kiwi players who struggle to earn the sums enjoyed by the majority of international players worldwide and are an immediate danger to the health of New Zealand cricket.

For now, at least, the Indian Twenty20 revolution is not an issue for England and a victory here would be a commendable effort for Collingwood's team after the soul-searching they were forced to undertake after the 10-wicket defeat in Hamilton.

'We knew we had to win three games in a row to win the tournament and we've won the first one,' said Collingwood, who was confident he would shrug off a touch of flu in time to play. 'We have two games to go and we will be approaching each like finals. In some ways it's a similar situation to the one we faced in Australia last year but we were a hell of a lot lower then. We had plumbed the depths but we dragged it back and won the series. Now we want to bounce back and do the same again here.'

Andrew Flintoff, meanwhile, has confirmed he will play on the England Lions tour of India. Flintoff, recovering from the fourth operation on his left ankle, will play in the three one-day matches that finish the tour today and on Thursday and Sunday purely as a batsman. His bowling will not be rushed. 'It was horrible for Fred when he went through all his rehabilitation after his last operation yet still felt the injury when he played again.' said Collingwood. 'We all hope this is another step towards getting him back fully fit and firing. That's what we all want.'

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in