Collingwood vows attacking cricket

Paul Collingwood, England's new one-day captain, says he wants his new-look squad to "attack the opposition" during the upcoming series against the West Indies.

Collingwood was among the favourites to replace Michael Vaughan, who stepped aside to concentrate on his Test role, more so after Kevin Pietersen - the only other real contender - said he did not feel ready for the responsibility of captaincy.

"We have played our best one-day cricket when we have been aggressive and tried to take the attack to the opposition," Collingwood said. "I'm not talking about going out there from ball one and trying to whack the ball all over the place. Hopefully we will approach it a bit more positively than in the past."

Collingwood has little experience of captaincy at any level but reasoned that his time at the top level will help him cope. By the end of the summer, if he remains fit, he will become England's third-most capped ODI player.

"I have got more than 100 caps experience in the one-day game and hopefully that will put me in good stead for what is going to come ahead," he said. "We'll have to wait and see what kind of a style I develop, but I'll be allowing the players to go out there and express themselves. That's when you play your best cricket."

England will hope dearly for any kind of upturn in fortunes. Since the 1992 World Cup final, when they were one of the most efficient ODI sides in the world, they have steadily regressed. Despite the odd shock triumphs - a 1997 tournament win in Sharjah and the CB series at the beginning of this year - as Collingwood acknowledged, "We haven't been a great one-day side for some time now, so it is a great opportunity to take our game to the next level."

Collingwood's role in the batting order and in the field has been vital to whatever England success there has been and he admitted he had yet to finalise with coach Peter Moores where he will bat. "I might bat high up or I might be more of a finisher" And whether he remains at backward point will also be looked at.

"We'll have to have a look at the fielding position as well. Backward point is quite a hard position to captain a side from because of the angles and things like that. I've had a little bit of a think about whether I go to extra cover and have people around the ground to help me out a little bit."

Collingwood's appointment also means that England will split the captaincy of their Test and ODI sides again, following the Nasser Hussain-Vaughan arrangement after the 2003 World Cup and the Adam Holliaoke-Michael Atherton experiment in 1997-98.

Collingwood was confident there would be no problems. "The Test captaincy is obviously a completely separate thing. Michael will go about that in his own way and I will go about the one-day captaincy in my own way. We will give advice to each other but we want to develop the sides as best we can in our own individual styles.

"Michael is a close friend and we will support each other 100% and want each other to do well in each job. It won't be a problem. It has worked for Australia in the past. We are both heading in the same direction. We want as good an England team as we can possibly get."