Fifth Test, Third Day: Paul Collingwood says 'Fuck It'

As Shane Watson edged behind in Australia's first innings, he said aloud, 'Oh No', picked up on the stump mike. He's a well brought up boy, a credit to Mr and Mrs W. I remember as a kid exclaiming quite loudly 'No!' in a spoiled brat voice when I popped a leading edge up in the air in some game or another, and being shocked as the sound came out of my mouth. Always weird when your internal monologue spills into the real world [over the years I've met a surprising amount of people who admit to commentating on themselves in their heads as they play... and you don't want to be involuntarily gobbing that out].

Watching Paul Collingwood last night, his thought processes seemed as stark and obvious as if he'd spoken them. Often the years of mental battle weigh on you more heavily than any physical injury or stress, because batting is an inward fight, a constant search for elusive stillness and instinct. Sometimes it becomes unreachable, and the short-circuit comes.

Beer was bowling to him, and, contrary to the hype he wasn't useless, or Paul Harris. He got a little turn, but more impressively, some drift and dip, and the ball thudded heavily into the pitch. Colly left a few and then came down to him. In those instants before he struck the ball, he would have been aware that it was a fraction too wide, that he wasn't quite there, and instead of dropping the bat he thought, 'fuck it', and swung anyway.

The shot was more revealing than most: it was a shot made in the accumulation of every failure that has gone before it, a shot of a man who has fought for a long time and who - somewhere in his psyche - wants to go out on his shield, to feel the relief of the struggle being over. That's what Colly did. Vale - and well played for all of those years. See you on the other side.

NB: This post went up before Colly announced his Test retirement: a more fitting tribute will appear in the player-by-player shindig to come.

Colly: Englishman

It's entirely appropriate that Paul Collingwood is England's most capped ODI player. He embodies all of the virtues and all the vices of England in the format. Even the number of appearances [171] tells the story in miniature. 

But more than that, he seems the perfect channel for England's narrative in ODIs: he's probably the team's most totemic member. If any opposing coach is giving a talk about playing England and he has to describe both their strengths and their weaknesses, he should probably just display a picture of the man. Everyone would get what he meant. 

In that spirit, I closed my eyes, thought of each of the other major ODI nations, and wrote down the first player that came to mind:

India: Sachin Tendulkar

Sri Lanka: Sanath Jayasuriya

Pakistan: Shahid Afridi

West Indies: Chris Gayle

Australia: Ricky Ponting

South Africa: Mark Boucher

New Zealand: Scott Styris [weird, I know]

Bangladesh: Mashrafe Mortaza

Strange, but it kind of works...

Living the high life in Lalit Land

In the IPL, as in most utopian fantasies, nothing is ever wrong. In a bizarre little television interview this morning, Paul Collingwood, cheeks flushed and grinning like a Moonie, told the world what a fantastic time he was having as a Delhi Daredevil. Neither he nor the interviewer felt bold enough to mention that Colly can't actually get in the team. He's coming home on Friday. 

That's the very day that the Telegraph and Times report that Colly will be named as England's T20 captain - albeit an England captain who can't quite cut it for the Delhi Daredevils. 

The ECB don't usually bother leaking stories unless they're contentious - Michael Vaughan is their regular subject - so perhaps this one has just escaped organically. Yet Collingwood's credentials hardly bear scrutiny. He gave up the limited over captaincy because the pressure of it was affecting him and up until a week ago was no more than lukewarm at the prospect of doing it again. He is, as ever, the expedient choice. 

Will Colly's grin be as fixed on Friday, once he's home from North Korea - er, make that South Africa - and finds himself 'unveiled'? And will he answer the question 'So Paul, how did you enjoy the IPL?' in quite the same way?

NB: The bookies have England at 10-1. You might as well make it 100-1 boys: it's essentially free money... 

What we have lost

Ah, Sabina Park. Patrick Patterson pushing off the sightscreen at one end, Michael Holding whispering in from somewhere around the dressing rooms at the other, a pitch you can see your face in, chin music for as long as you can take it...

Oh sorry, that Sabina Park. Big Sulieman Benn in off three paces at one end, Chris Gayle off two at the other, a pitch the colour of Murali's dreams, spin from both ends before lunch on day one. And Ian Bell back in the hutch of course. After a nice twenty, naturally. He's hitting it beautifully in the nets as well.

Bell's stranglehold on the selectors' dreams has come about because his batting promises so much. Paul Collingwood's no longer seems to. He's been out of form so long, it's plain that he's not actually out of form any more. This is his form. Even when he makes runs, and he has two hundreds in his last seven innings, he's like a man holding off death. His guns have been spiked; he's lost the firepower to drive the opposition back. 

Colly is the batting equivalent of Matthew Hoggard, a stout yeoman, reliable and keen as a labrador. Hoggy was cruelly dumped, but fairly, too. For the very top of the game, something imperceptible had gone. Something imperceptible seems to have gone from Collingwood's batting too. His reservoir of talent isn't as deep as Bell's, just as Hoggard's wasn't as deep as Harmison's. What's lost may never come back to him.