England Cricket / Ralph Ellis / 16 February 2010 /

Long regarded as an obdurate player and England's go-to guy in a crisis, Paul Collingwood is aiming to open up his batting and attack the Pakistan bowlers in the forthcoming Twenty20 series.

Andrew Strauss has stayed home and so Alastair Cook is the captain. That's the simple way to think about the next phase of England's cricket winter - except it's not quite right. This weekend it will be Paul Collingwood who is, in football parlance, wearing the armband.

As if the national side didn't already play too many games, into the schedule comes an extra couple of fixtures this weekend - two Twenty20 games against Pakistan in Dubai. Collingwood, the one England cricketer who never rests, is in charge for both of them.

He's given a deep, long interview to the Guardian today that offers a glimpse of his gruelling schedule. He's had a couple of weeks at home followed by an emotional farewell to wife Vicki and their daughters Shannon, three, and two-year-old Keira. It will be three months exactly before he sees them again. Dubai then Bangladesh is followed by the Indian Premier League, then the Twenty20 World Cup in the West Indies. In an age when most players try to pick and choose their matches, he remains one of the handful who is available for his country for every form of the game.

"Having a break is not an option," he explains simply. "It wouldn't go down well if I missed Bangladesh and then played in the IPL."

So what can we expect from the down to earth Durham star and his team? Pakistan are [2.76] favourites to win the two match Twenty20 series, with England priced at [3.75] and the draw [2.1] favourite in a market that's just forming. The squad has been picked to develop more players, with Yorkshire's fast bowler Ajmal Shahzad given a chance to prove he could emerge in the Freddie Flintoff all-rounder's role.

Collingwood himself has been working to set his batting free. You think of him as the obdurate guy who holds an end up to save matches, as he did so memorably a couple of times in the Test series in South Africa. But he can also go on the attack, and reveals that he's been working at hitting sixes, training in the middle trying to clear the ropes rather than in the confines of the nets.

After both had played more than 170 one-day games, the stats showed South Africa's Hanse Cronje had hit 30 more sixes, and that's something Collingwood says he needs to correct. "People might think I've played my best cricket but my game is improving all the time," he says.

Collingwood's positive approach is typical of the ambition shown under Andy Flower who has rather blossomed (sorry for the pun) since he took charge. The response to beating Australia last summer was to look at how the team could get better still, and they are a safe investment to win the Test series in Bangladesh as a result - even if you will only get [1.23]. If the improvement goes on then laying Australia for next winter's Ashes series at [1.61] could be a far more lucrative bet.

Five things you might not know about Ajmal Shahzad

1. Most accounts say he comes from Bradford, but he was actually born in July 1985 in Birkby near Huddersfield and the family moved when he was three. Educated at Bradford Grammar School he then moved to posh Woodhouse Grove to study for four A levels

2. At 14 he was told he was too fat to be a sportsman and put on a diet supervised by the county's cricket Academy

3. He applied to go to dental school before cutting his teeth in county cricket instead - becoming in 2004 the first Asian born in Yorkshire to play for them

4. He scored a century on his debut for England's Under 19 side on a tour to Denmark and Holland

5. He's already a qualified bowling coach and was working in local schools before his call to join the winter tours

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