Character cheers Collingwood

6 September 2007

Robin Uthappa takes to the air to celebrate a remarkable India victory with two balls to spare

Captain Paul Collingwood insisted he saw all the fighting qualities he wants from his developing team in their last-over defeat against India.

A captivating one-day match containing almost 640 runs was snatched from England’s grasp at the Brit Oval by Robin Uthappa, who hit successive fours off Stuart Broad to level the NatWest Series at 3-3.

Collingwood himself was controversially run out in an England innings of 316 for six which featured a maiden century from Owais Shah (107 not out), a blistering half-century on debut from Luke Wright, and five sixes from consecutive deliveries in the last over from Dimitri Mascarenhas off Yuvraj Singh.

A breathless chain of events resumed after the interval, Sachin Tendulkar (94) narrowly missing his first hundred of the summer - before Uthappa (47no) had the last word as India got home with two wickets and two balls to spare.

Collingwood admitted: “We are very disappointed. There are a lot of very disappointed boys in the dressing room.

“It was a great game of cricket. It is tough to take when you are on the wrong end of a result, but I think we can take a lot of positives out of that.

“We were put under a lot of pressure there, and the way we fought back in the first innings - a young guy like Luke Wright to come in with a swashbuckling 50 to change the momentum - made it a great effort to get up to more than 300.”

England had to withstand a barrage when Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly (53) launched the chase with a boundary-laden opening stand of 150 in just 23 overs.

Dimitri Mascarenhas opens his shoulders late to hit one of five sixes in a row © Getty Images

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Collingwood continued: “When India were batting, for us to fight back - after the start they had - to nearly win that game was a top effort. I cannot fault any of the lads.

As for Mascarenhas, his 30 runs from five balls was something neither he, his captain, nor anyone else in the ground will forget.

“It was a top effort by Dimi - great striking of the ball,” added Collingwood.

“The only thing I can remember close to that was South Africa against Australia when both sides scored 400.

“That was like constant highlights - and it’s the only thing that comes close to today.”

Mascarenhas said: “It’s what I have been doing for Hampshire for the last four or five years more consistently.”

He admitted he has never previously managed more than three sixes in an over, explaining: “After the second one I thought ‘I am seeing it pretty well here, I am just swinging hard’.

“They just hit the middle of the bat - and he [Yuvraj] probably bowled them in the right areas for me. If you ask him, I guess he’d think he just got it a little bit wrong.”

The first six would have been a four had Piyush Chawla not carried the ball over - and Mascarenhas recalled: “I saw him catch it and just thought ‘touch the rope, touch the rope’. Sometimes you need a bit of luck.”

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Winning captain Rahul Dravid could only stand and watch. “I’ve never seen hitting quite as big as that,” he said. “If Piyush had caught the first one, it would have been different.

“After that one I said to Yuvraj ‘don’t worry - he’ll edge the next one’. Then I said it after the second one - but after the third one I gave up.”

Dravid had much more to smile about four hours later, as he explained: “At 3-1 down, we knew we’d lost a couple of close games that could have gone the other way.

“We got a bit of the rub of the green, but we have shown a lot of resilience after a long tour.”

Collingwood, meanwhile, was struggling to remember the moment debutant umpire Peter Hartley packed him off for a single - in an incident which might have been the sole talking point from an average match.

The Durham player was given out only after a big-screen replay persuaded him he was wrong initially not to call for a video referral.

Collingwood said: “It was obviously a little bit of a mistake from the umpire.

“He’s a great bloke, who I’ve played against in county cricket, and will be a very good umpire.

“It was disappointing at the time. He didn’t want to have a look at the replays; then suddenly he did after seeing it on the big screen - so thank you very much to the people who put it up there.

“The good thing to point out is I actually forgot about that incident - because it’s been such a good game.”