Paul Collingwood and Ian Bell Both Produce Crackers

With county cricket under major threat from Twenty20, the ICL stealing many young cricketers hoping to make it big, and right-handed batsmen temporarily converting themselves to left, English cricket is in a considerable state of flux.

Thank goodness then for the likes of Ian Bell and Paul Collingwood. Both these batsman's places were under considerably threat at the start of the Npower test again South Africa, but both displayed great composure to bat themselves beyond the 100 milestone.

First, lets take a look at Ian Bell's exceptional innings. From the outside, Bell looks to be a normal, well-adjusted English cricketer going about his everyday business—but he might just be the best thing to come out of Warwickshire since Dennis Amiss put English cricket back on the map.

After a sterile Test series against New Zealand, the cricketers of England's finest counties came stomping out of the Lord's pavilion recharged and revitalised.

Bell carefully and patiently compiled his innings for England, like a bricklayer on a building site. It was an innings of toil and labour, craft and caution. He pulled, cut, nicked and glanced beautifully to the boundaries as if he'd been doing it all his life.

Shortly before stumps, Bell drove naively back to the tiring Paul Harris, and the South African bowler pouched the catch. Harris looked as relieved as a man whose bus had just arrived. Bell cursed himself for a second or two, and then just smiled regretfully.

Perhaps he was thinking of another day and a team called Australia. Now that would be the icing on the cake.

We've all dropped Collingwood. I've dropped him. Numerous bloggers have dropped him. Yet he was the one man who managed to stay with England's obvious saviour, Kevin Pietersen, and who suddenly graduated to becoming England's only possible saviour on Pietersen's departure.

"Does Collingwood need 50 to save his place? 100? 150?" we pondered, but not for long. The cricket was often too captivating to dwell upon the hypothetical.

Pietersen played his shots, sometimes of breathtaking quality. But Collingwood's contribution was more mesmerising.

Whatever we think about Collingwoods's place, or more importantly the selectors think, we have to admire Collingwood at Edgbaston—it was such a brave innings. Clearly he had decided that if he was going to go, he would go playing his own way.

He had been distressingly passive in the first innings, trying to block his way out of his torment. So in the second innings, he trusted his own way.

He square cut Morkel, then he upper cut him over the slips. Collingwood had to be aggressive to survive. He had the wit to realise that. Pietersen, of course, did not have to be aggressive to survive. He had the South Africans in the palm of his hand. Unlike Collingwood, he could have blocked his way to a century.

The irony is that he may have benefited from being left out at Headingley, where England’s 10-wicket loss forced the selectors to revert to their instincts in the search for the team unity that Vaughan proclaimed was missing in Leeds.

Victory at Edgbaston would require players of substance, so back Collingwood came. Even so, the pick felt like a punt. His first-class record this season before Friday was 96 runs at 12, and his first-innings failure meant England could no longer boast that their top six all averaged over 40.

However, acting on advice from Vaughan to be “aggressive but not reckless”, Collingwood resurrected his career, even if his heroics were ultimately not enough to keep England in the series.

By the time he was last out, trying to cut a delivery from Albie Morkel that was too close to him, he could justifiably reflect on the innings of his life.