LONDON: Paul Collingwood has spoken to Andrew Strauss about a potential return to the England set-up, revealing he would be open to a role in the new regime but that he remains committed to playing for Durham.

Collingwood captained England to the World Twenty20 title in 2010 and was an assistant coach with Scotland at this year’s World Cup. He also worked under Ashley Giles who was England’s limited-overs coach before the arrival of Peter Moores, who has since departed and will be replaced by the Australian Trevor Bayliss.

While still captaining and performing well for Durham, the 39-year-old admitted a role within England’s new establishment under Strauss, the director of cricket, would be extremely tempting. Informal talks have already been held as Strauss looks to form an advisory panel to help significantly improve England’s ODI performances.

“I’ve spoken to Straussy but there’s nothing concrete as yet,” Collingwood was quoted as saying by The Guardian. “He knows my position, that I’m still enjoying playing. I love England, England is my passion. The experience of playing for England for so many years, that’s where you feel you belong, in that dressing room wearing the three lions. You’re never guaranteed a job when you come out of cricket but if there was a role they wanted us to play somewhere it would be hard to turn down.

“The thing with playing for Durham is that through the off season you get the opportunity to go and have a look at different avenues. I would have thought I’d have another year of playing, I’m still enjoying it and love trying to help develop the youngsters up at Durham who are coming through.”

Collingwood, who has also worked as a fielding consultant with the UAE, backed the recent form of his county team-mates Ben Stokes and Mark Wood as extremely pleasing, but the former all-rounder was scathing in his description of England’s ODI performance at the World Cup.

“I think everybody has probably said what they need to say over the past few months,” he said. “It was obviously pretty prehistoric in terms of the way they went about things. You could see that in the results that they got. I think everybody knows there has to be a new direction in the ODI thinking and it seems that things have been put in place for that.”

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2015

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