England secure confidence boosting win over Pakistan

(GETTY IMAGES)

Heartening half-centuries from Paul Collingwood and Kevin Pietersen, and more wickets for Stuart Broad, eased England to a 67-run World Cup warm-up win over Pakistan.

Pietersen (66) and Collingwood (65) were the main contributors to England's 273 all out, the former producing welcome evidence his move up the order may work in the sub-continent and the latter back to form in the nick of time before this tournament begins in earnest.

Broad continued his impressive return from injury with four top-order wickets to undermine Pakistan's reply under lights, and Younus Khan's hard-working 80 could not redress the balance - especially after Collingwood chipped in with figures of three for 48.

Pietersen's 78-ball innings earlier ended in the 27th over, leaving much work for other batsmen.

It fell principally therefore to Collingwood to engineer a defendable total after England had been asked to bat first.

They lost Andrew Strauss in the third over of their first meeting with Pakistan since last summer's Test and limited-overs series ended in acrimony thanks to the spot-fixing crisis.

Three Pakistan players have subsequently been banned for five years each by the International Cricket Council, but there was an otherwise familiar look to the opposition.

In front of a capacity crowd of 16,000 - hundreds had to queue outside and took their seats only midway through England's innings - it was veteran fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar who struck first, as Strauss posted his second single-figure score in succession.

He followed Wednesday's one run against Canada at this same venue with five today - bowled, edging an ugly heave to leg on to his stumps.

Jonathan Trott joined Pietersen but could not get going, and when left-armer Junaid Khan (three for 44) changed the angle by going round the wicket he was soon rewarded - clipping a bail after the number three missed as he too aimed to leg.

Pietersen dominated a stand of 70 with Ian Bell, going to his 50 by hitting off-spinner Saeed Ajmal for a six over long-on and looked set for three figures until he went up the wicket to slow left-armer Abdur Rehman and failed to cover the spin.

Collingwood struggled early on, and Bell was stumped off Ajmal when he made ground only to miss an attempt to chip runs into the leg-side.

But Ravi Bopara struck the ball cleanly and ran well to help put on 82 in only 12 overs - and Collingwood found his touch to reach 50 in 60 balls, despite managing only two boundaries.

After Bopara holed out at long-on, Collingwood - without a half-century in his last 11 one-day international innings - and Matt Prior kept the tempo high until a late clatter of five wickets for 12 runs as Wahab Riaz finished with three for 52.

Broad (five for 25), who had taken three wickets with the new ball and five in all two days ago in his first match for more than two months, put Pakistan in instant trouble.

He had Mohammad Hafeez neatly caught at first slip by Strauss, then saw off a pair of Akmals - Kamran pinned lbw on off-stump and Umar undone by low bounce to be bowled on the back foot.

Younus responded with some typically sensible batting, for a 70-ball half-century.

But he needed support - and in the absence of Shahid Afridi or Abdul Razzaq's middle-order power, both all-rounders surprisingly rested by Pakistan, it was not forthcoming.

Tim Bresnan, back after his calf injury, bowled accurately - and although James Anderson was a little rusty, especially with the new ball, Strauss had plenty of back-up options.

Collingwood and Anderson bagged a wicket each when Asad Shafiq and then Ahmad Shehzad missed big hits.

Then with approaching nine-an-over required, Misbah-ul-Haq was lbw to Collingwood, attempting a drive down to long-on.

Younus was left with too much to do and eventually fell in a vain cause, appropriately to the returning Broad when he edged a wide ball and was well-caught behind by Prior.