Paul Collingwood believes England can beat Sri Lanka in World Twenty20

The England team were training out at the Beausejour Stadium again yesterday, practising their six-hitting off a few short-range throw-downs. "This is certainly the most powerful England side I have played in, down to No10 everybody can hit sixes," Paul Collingwood said after his own session clobbering boundaries over the scratch fielders. "Once you see our guys on the teamsheet you think, 'We can take the opposition on now.' We are a lot more powerful than we used to be." Ahead of today's World Twenty20 semi-final, that power is translating itself into self-belief. "The training we have been doing is all about confidence," Collingwood said. "It is one of the crucial factors in this form of the game. It is really about the belief you take out on to the park." That is why Collingwood believes Kevin Pietersen will be fine and fit to play after his 4,500-mile round-trip to London and back for the birth of his first child. Pietersen will arrive this afternoon. "In this form of the game the frame of mind is the crucial thing," Collingwood said, "and he is going to be in a great frame of mind. He's had a baby boy two days ago and he is going to be a happy man." Anxious perhaps to avoid his bowlers' grumbles, Collingwood was quick to add that "a lot of credit has to go to the bowlers. They have been thinking for themselves a lot whereas in the past maybe they were always guided by the captain. Now they really are going out there and thinking for themselves, thinking about the opposition's strengths and weaknesses and adjusting fields accordingly." The difficulty is, as Collingwood concedes, that some of Sri Lanka's strengths are unknown to the England team. "The one thing they have got is that they are quite unorthodox in their bowling," he said. "There's a slight concern in that quite a lot of the guys haven't played against the angle of [Lasith] Malinga and the skiddiness of him. And [Ajantha] Mendis, not many of us have played against him. When guys are bowling 24 balls at you, you can't give yourself six or seven to get yourself in. So we have to watch as much footage as possible and talk about it among ourselves." Mendis was dropped for Sri Lanka's last match and Kumar Sangakkara refused to be drawn on whether he would play today. "We have got a lot of variation in our bowling attack and we will try and exploit that in these conditions which are a bit more suited to us," the captain said. "At the same time in Twenty20 the intent of the batsman is such that they are always looking to score runs and sometimes that can nullify the effectiveness of certain bowlers. So we have got to think of all the angles when we select our final XI. It has got to be about how we exploit the conditions to suit our own strengths." His team, Sangakkara admits, are different to but not necessarily better than the side which lost the final to Pakistan in 2009. "We have done well in patches but we have to do better tomorrow. England are a very good side, they have a lot more balance then they have ever had before, a lot more depth and a lot of all-rounders." Collingwood says he saw this semi-final coming. "I had a real sense when we turned up that in this squad we had made some great selections from the start and they have really come good for us. Just looking around the lads I thought there was a real belief there from the start. Sometimes when you get to these situations you can sense the nerves but that is not the case this time, there is a lot of excitement around." However, as Sangakkara knows from his own experience: "Hoping and wishing and wanting is one thing but actually doing it is another."