Paul Collingwood praised England's 'fantastic' one-day win over New Zealand, but says they will need to improve again.
England skipper praises Auckland win which keeps them in series.
Paul Collingwood praised England's 'fantastic' one-day win over New Zealand, but says they will need to improve again to keep up their hopes of an unlikely series victory.
England managed to bounce back from two bitterly disappointing defeats to win by six wickets in Auckland to pull the five-match series back to 2-1.
It was a vastly improved performance all-round by England, who bowled well to restrict New Zealand to 234 on a good batting track, before making 229-4 from 44 overs in a revised Duckworth-Lewis target.
"It was a fantastic win," Collingwood told
Sky Sports after the game. "A good all-round performance.
"I won the toss and elected to bowl first and the boys went out there and set the tone from ball one. People might say we should have bowled them out for less but we were happy with that kind of total on that wicket.
"You can be very critical of the bowlers over the last two performances, but I guess the effort was there. But when they only had 130, 150 on the board you can get over eager, but today it was controlled, it was aggressive and they took early wickets and that put them under pressure."
Partnership
Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell produced a timely century partnership, while Collingwood himself added an unbeaten 70 to fire England home.
"I thought the Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell partnership was fantastic," added the skipper.
"It wasn't easy but they both grafted away. There was an innings for KP that was pretty much unlike him but he gutsed it out and that's the important thing and a hundred partnership at that stage was crucial for us.
"There were a lot of good performances today, you look at Stuart Broad for a youngster to come out and put his hand up today - a lot of guys in that dressing room can be proud of themselves."
After their first two disappointing defeats, Collingwood says the team had a lot of talking to do, but was happy they put their plans into action.
"We have done a lot of talking, we needed to. We have done a lot of good things today but it's just one win and we're not going to get carried away again. We've given ourselves a chance - we've got two more games and if we win those two we win the series."
On his own fine batting performance, Collingwood added: "It's nice not to get run out to be honest with you, that pretty much helps.
"I thought I was going to need a telescopic bat at one point, but it's nice to score a few runs and to finish it off like that is very satisfying."
Confidence
England have finally got themselves back into the series, but Collingwood warned New Zealand will hit back hard in the next game in Napier.
"They're a very good side, they're not number three in the world for nothing, in the last two games they put us under a lot of pressure and played a hell of a lot better than us.
"But today we came out, bounced back and did a lot of good things, but we can't get carried away and we'll go down to Napier with confidence but we'll need a better performance than this even."
