 Collingwood hit two fours and a six in his 18 from 12 balls |
England captain Paul Collingwood turned his attentions to South Africa after admitting they were roundly outplayed by Australia in Cape Town on Friday. England were thrashed by eight wickets in the World Twenty20 but have still qualified for the Super Eight phase. "Come Sunday the boys will be pumped up and raring to go," said Collingwood. "We hold our hands up and say we were outplayed by Australia. We know we have to improve but we can do that, we have players who can win games for England." After being bowled out for 135 - their lowest Twenty20 score - in their 20 overs, England were helpless to prevent Australia winning with more than five overs to spare.  | A lot of our guys have been playing cricket a long time and unless you can back up comments they don't mean anything |
Collingwood added: "The better side won. It was a disappointing performance but we are through so it gives us a chance to. "We can play better than that, we realise that, but we're still learning. "We didn't get enough runs on the board and if we're going to progress in this I think we're going to have to be a little bit braver in our strokeplay. "Quite a lot of batsmen got in and didn't go on to make that big total. "It was always going to be hard to defend a total like that on a pitch like that against a side like Australia who played fantastically well." England, having beaten Zimbabwe on Thursday, qualified from their group in second place and now move into the Super Eight phase with a pool comprising South Africa, New Zealand and one other. Counterpart Ricky Ponting was pleased to quickly cast aside the embarrassment of defeat against Zimbabwe. "We're a fair bit happier than we were a couple of days ago," he said. "We knew that we had some better cricket in us than we had the other day and it was a pretty comprehensive win. "We bowled pretty well and did the job with the bat so it was pretty satisfying. "The bowling group was where the game was won, we fielded well and took our chances and took our chances with the bat as well. Gilly and Matty were very good." Ponting added that Kevin Pietersen's comments on Thursday acted as extra motivation for his side. Pietersen initially said it would be "nice to send Australia home early," before attempting to play down the severity of his remarks. "A lot of the guys in this side have been playing cricket a long time and unless you can back up comments they don't mean anything," Ponting said. "They had their chance to do what he [Pietersen] said they wanted to do, which was to try to humiliate us, and if anything they were the ones who walked off humiliated." Collingwood was a paragon of diplomacy and said: "Kevin's obviously Kevin. We just wanted to go and win the game."
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Interview: England captain Paul Collingwood
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