The importance of a top-quality finisher in a one-day side has been shown by the outstanding success of Australia's Michael Bevan, and in the absence of Graham Thorpe, England may just have found one in Paul Collingwood. Our graph shows how Collingwood worked the Indian spinners - Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag - around in the middle of the innings at Cuttack. This is an area in which England have been consistently embarrassed in one-day cricket down the years (remember the deeds of those demon spinners Shahid Afridi and Chris Gayle?), but Collingwood looks to have the cool head and flexible wrists needed to keep the scoreboard moving without recourse to risky hitting.

In fact he only hit three fours and two sixes in his whole innings, and 30 of the 54 runs he scored off the spinners came in singles (55%). For Michael Vaughan the figure was even higher, a startling 78% (28 of 38 runs). Given the brainless boundary-or-bust approach England have favoured in the past, this is an encouraging development.

Collingwood scored those 54 runs off the spinners from just 60 balls, and crucially was able to pick the gaps on the leg side, particularly off Kumble. Collingwood faced 11 deliveries from the spinners that pitched on middle stump, off which he scored 21 runs. That's a rate of 11.5 runs per over.

England played the spinners a lot better as a team than they did in the first match at Calcutta. With the exception of Marcus Trescothick's once-in-a-lifetime innings, England managed 54 runs off 80 balls off the spinners (4.05 per over) there. At Cuttack it was 127 off 169 (4.51); over 50 overs that's a difference of 23 runs - the difference, in fact, between victory and defeat.

Rob Smyth is on the staff of Wisden.com.

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd