When Graham Thorpe retired from one-day internationals at the end of last summer's NatWest Series, English cricket was deprived of one of the finest nurdlers in the world game. Other batsmen might be able to crash boundaries at will, but Thorpe's greatest asset, like Neil Fairbrother before him, was his eye for the gap. Of England's probable World Cup line-up, only he could be relied on to pick off the ones and twos and keep the score ticking over in mid-innings. Step forward, Paul Collingwood. Not even Thorpe could have played a more perfectly paced innings than Collingwood managed at the WACA today. As our graph shows, Collingwood scored 62 of his 100 runs in singles, which amounts to a staggering 85% of his scoring shots. Fifty-one of his 125 deliveries were dot-balls, and from the remaining 11, he managed five twos, four fours, and two sixes – one a slightly fortuitous top-edge over the keeper's head, the other an emphatic clump over long-on.

Collingwood scored his runs all around the wicket – 48 runs behind square, 52 in front – and was in control of an impressive 91% of his shots, even though Sri Lanka's bowlers maintained an admirable off stump line (73%). He scored the bulk of his runs after England's top order had been decimated in the first half of his innings. And, in the final over, he reached his maiden one-day century – something that Thorpe, for all his achievements, could never quite manage.

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