Collingwood leads new breed for South Africa

When Paul Collingwood picks up his bat and takes a net, he gets down to business right away. The idea is to replicate what happens in the middle.

"If it's the last two overs, and it might be for me, you're not going to take a couple of sighters. The bowlers send down yorkers. It's the last 12 balls and you've got to smash them out of the ground." This is not most people's idea of nets, he says, but then this is not a gentle warm-up back at the county ground in Durham. This is one-day international cricket and it is training to play in a cauldron and to win. Under Duncan Fletcher and Nasser Hussain it is part of England's game of catch-up before the World Cup.

Collingwood is an interesting case. He was selected for the one-day squad last year, principally as a batsman, but Fletcher likes his players to add a dimension to their game and Collingwood is expected to bowl five or six overs. He works on his medium-paced bowling too: "I've learned quite a bit from Ronnie Irani, who mixes his pace and length well. He never seems to give them drive balls."

He has batted as high as No 3, but this summer Collingwood has been coming in at No 8. He is what is known in the latest jargon as "a finisher" – the batsman who guides the team through the last 10 or 15 overs. He did just that, with a timely 38, along with Alec Stewart against Sri Lanka at Headingley. It is a difficult role, hard to build an innings. "You're in a kind of no-win situation, but it's fantastic when you knock off the runs," he says.

Collingwood is 26, just under six foot tall, lean with short ginger hair. He comes from Shotley Bridge, just north of Consett in County Durham. He surfaced in international cricket in last summer's NatWest series after a good winter in district cricket in Melbourne and a great start in the Championship. He had a torrid start with England. In four innings he scored 20 runs and bowled only seven overs without taking a wicket.

"You have to believe in yourself on this stage and when I got out of there I thought, 'I'm not good enough, that's it'. It was a horrible feeling because I'm so ambitious to do well." His form fell away and his self-belief was badly eroded. David Boon, the former Australian No 3 who played at Durham, told Collingwood that cricket was 20 per cent technique and 80 per cent mental. Collingwood says that rises to 90 per cent in international cricket, and his was hovering just above zero.

But the selectors persevered with him. Before the short tour of Zimbabwe he got an appointment with Steve Bull, the official England shrink: "Not to see if I was mad. It was a case of putting together my goals – fitness, technique. He said, 'We're going to make an environment in which you'll feel confident'." They succeeded too, which speaks well of England's management.

Collingwood went to India, played in the one-day international in Calcutta and found it a surreal experience: "I've tried to explain to my family and friends but it's hard. There's 110,000 in the ground and when Sachin Tendulkar comes in to bat you can't hear yourself speak. I'm shitting myself, but I walked up to Snapsie [Jeremy Snape] and started laughing, there's nothing else I could do, and I shouted, 'Just remember this moment'. You can either freeze or it raises your game. I love playing in front of the crowds."

Collingwood did well in India, scoring 71 at Cuttack, and although he had a thin time with the bat in New Zealand he took 4 for 38 at Napier. He has had a couple of decent innings during this summer's NatWest series and taken four wickets. Coming into yesterday's final at Lord's he averaged 24.72 from 23 innings, though his 12 wickets had cost 47.41. He is still promising, as he recognises himself. When we got in a muddle about "finisher" and "finished" he said he is still learning. "I've only played 20-odd games. I'm an absolute novice. Obviously I need a lot more games before I become the finished article." He is extending the range of his shots, risking the sweep at Old Trafford when the bowlers gave him no alternative. He is determined to get his pace up from the low seventies to the high seventies, perhaps to 80mph.

If he can do that, his slower ball becomes more threatening. He wants to become less of a bits-and-pieces man and to establish himself as England's fifth bowler.

And has he become resigned to being a solely one-day England player? Not at all. "It's norrup to us," he says in his Durham accent. "It's the selectors who decide." But he proposes to get bagfuls of runs in county cricket to help them. "I'm 10th in the bowling averages too," he says. In case they haven't noticed.