England Dominate, But Still Without A Ton

Collingwood - chipped in with 59.

England's misfiring top order endured another innings without a century between them but still established a commanding lead over New Zealand in the second Test.

Widely criticised for their performances in both innings during the desperate 189-run opening Test defeat in Hamilton, England's batsmen were under pressure to deliver at the Basin Reserve having seen the ruthless nature of the selectors by their decision to drop senior seamers Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard.

But despite only Paul Collingwood and Alastair Cook reaching half-centuries out of the top six, the tourists still established a daunting 421-run lead by reaching a comfortable 277 for nine by the close of the third day.

It took their tally of centuries to just five in the last three series stretching back to last summer's home defeat by India, a miserable run for a top six who all arrived in New Zealand with an average over 40.

Once again every batsman got themselves in and once again none of them were able to go on and play a major innings, even in a situation where they were batting with little pressure such was their commanding lead at the start of the day.

"We can be really harsh on ourselves and say someone should have gone on and got that big one, but I think our first-innings total was good especially after we were put into bat," stressed Collingwood, who was out in the final over of the day for a battling 59.

"We all realise what our targets are, we want to score hundreds and more than 400 in the first innings. We've done a lot of talking as a batting group and we know where we need to improve and we know what we need to do but I wouldn't say there's any added pressure on us because people were dropped."

England were fortunate they had already established a 148-run lead overnight and knew that providing they did not suffer a collapse on a a par with the final day at Hamilton, when they were dismissed for a lowly 110, New Zealand would be facing a massive target.

Having lost captain Michael Vaughan in the sixth over of the morning, England spent the rest of the day steadily building on their lead with Cook and Strauss forging a 106-run partnership which seemed to set them both up for big innings.

But they both fell in successive overs in mid-afternoon with Cook edging seamer Kyle Mills to slip and Strauss, who is yet to make a half-century since returning to the side for this series, was given lbw playing across the line to all-rounder Jacob Oram.

The stage was set for Kevin Pietersen to seize the moment with the pressure off as England had already established a 271-run lead while without overhead conditions to aid swing bowling, the wicket was also favouring the batsmen.

Like the rest of England's top order, however, Pietersen is also going through a loss of form and entered today's innings having failed to score a half-century in his previous nine Test outings.

He looked in prime form, hitting two early boundaries to reach 17 but then suffered some desperate bad luck when Ian Bell drove seamer Chris Martin back down the pitch and in trying to stop the ball he deflected it onto the stumps at the non-striker's end to run out Pietersen.

The Hampshire batsman had a wry grin on his face as he returned to the dressing room but Collingwood, a lifelong Sunderland fan, revealed: "I think there were a few curses from him once he got out, but those sort of things happen when you're going through a run like that.

"If you look at the sides at the bottom of the Premier League table, they don't get the rub of the green either. I'm sure the worm will turn and he'll get back in the runs again.

"I'm sure he'll want to score big runs and I'm sure he's thinking about it but we all know he's got the class and the ability to bounce back from that.

"He does feel in good nick and he was just unfortunate today with that dismissal. You're going to get those but once he's scores that big one he'll get that feeling back."

While Pietersen had an excuse, Bell did not. He drove loosely to point having battled for over two hours for his 41 and had a close escape when he was dropped in identical circumstances on 12.

The new ball accounted for Tim Ambrose, Stuart Broad and Ryan Sidebottom in quick succession to leave Collingwood running out of partners if he wanted to reach his half-century.

Monty Panesar kept him company long enough to reach his half-century, but Collingwood fell in the final over to leave England firmly in command but having missed out again on an opportunity to end their century drought.