The 32 year old Collingwood was nervous at the beginning of his playing and hesitated from hitting hard shots. Pietersen quickly built his confidence with his aggressive game against South African.
Collingwood followed the style of Pietersen and amused the viewers with his offside cuts, pull shots and punch shots.
At the beginning, Pietersen was had to struggle to get runs by Jacques Kallis.
Jacques Kallis continuously bowled on the outside off-stump and Pietersen faced them with patience. But soon he become use to with the pace and bounce of the pitch.
He began to show his real game and entertained his fans in a striking way. He dealt with the fast bowlers very roughly and whenever they made a fault to over pitch the ball he drove it down the ground. And whenever he received the ball on the short side he pulled disdainfully for four.
The South African skipper shuffled the bowling combination hoping to cope with the situation but all this effort made no major difference. The ball kept on going to the boundary and runs kept on piling up. Collingwood was equally playing the striking and aggressive game and also continued to drive cut and pull shots.
They only got relief when they succeeded in putting a meaningful score. This thing built up their confidence and their game turned out to be more aggressive and adventurous. Collingwood made his eleventh test fifty for 61 balls when he played a push shot on his off side.
South African tried their best to control Pietersen but not succeeded.
He was moving quickly towards his 14th Test hundred. He wished and planned to reach his century figure with a marvelous six. He drove hard on Harris delivery which went straight in the hands of A B de Villiers who was standing at the mid-on position.
That was the time for extreme desperation for Pietersen. He swished his bat angrily. He missed his century due to his aggressive shot under his enthusiastic emotions. That was a golden chance for him which he missed.
Pietersen went out of the ground under loud and appreciative hand clapping from the crowd. The same kind of cheerful feeling was shown again by the crowd when Andrew Flintoff entered the ground. The crowd was much expecting from this all-rounder. But he failed to play a responsible game.
On his fourth delivery, he was taken by Hashim Amla at short leg after hitting his pad.
In the past we see that England batsmen were famous for playing a high class cricket, but in this match Alastair Cook, Michael Vaughan and Ian Bell played really opposite to that.
Cook was the first to go back to pavilion. The ball edged at the top of the bat and went straight up in the air. That was not a real good delivery by Makhaya Ntini. Mark Boucher was there to take the catch.
Andrew Strauss, he was the only batsman who could not be blamed.
His wicket was taken by Morne Morkel. The delivery took extra bounce which was unexpected to Strauss. He totally failed to control a ball. The ball took edge at his bat and went towards Kallis who was standing at second slip and he didn’t miss the chance.
