Collingwood rues fielding lapses
Paul Collingwood put the blame for England's 19-run defeat against South Africa at Newlands on their poor fielding rather than the crucial, and slightly controversial, run-out of Kevin Pietersen
Andrew McGlashan at Newlands
16-Sep-2007
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"He [Pietersen] was looking at the fielder and the ball and Pollock,
whether he meant it or not, got in his way," explained Collingwood.
"He would have got in very easily and that was a bit of bad luck we
had tonight, but even with that we still should have knocked those
runs off."
Collingwood then suggested that the third umpire could have given
Pietersen not out, even though it isn't within his remit. "Sometimes
you think common sense would prevail and maybe the third umpire would
give him not out.
"If that's something that has to be put into the rules regarding
decisions like that I'm not too sure. I don't want to make it a big
issue. It was the third umpire's decision and he has to make that
quick decision."
Graeme Smith had no issues with the dismissal: "If I felt Shaun did it
on purpose I would have called KP back but he was trying to get back
to the stumps. It's a big pitch out there and Kevin ran straight at
him in the middle of the wicket."
Collingwood said it was England's shoddy catching which let South
Africa off the hook after they had been reduced to 94 for 6. At least
six chances went down, the most costly of which came when Albie Morkel
was on 14. Collingwood, back peddling from midwicket, couldn't get a hand to a steepling top-edge and it appeared a more comfortable chance for Owais
Shah running in from long-on.
"It was very noisy out there and I wasn't sure whether Owais had heard
my call because I saw him out of the corner of my eye," said
Collingwood. "I don't think our ground fielding was too bad, it was
the catches and it was very costly in the end. It is something we have
to look at. I can hold my hands up on that one and we could have
probably bowled South Africa out for maybe 130.
"If they'd have got a score like that it would have put them out of
the game - saying that I think we'd have still taken 154 at the start
of the day and we were disappointed we didn't knock them off."
Andrew McGlashan is a staff writer on Cricinfo