Pakistan are supposed to be the inconsistent side in their group, but it is England who have shown many faces in the first days of the World Twenty20. Stirred by indignant reaction to their overconfidence against the Netherlands, they were fully focused last night, with a better-balanced side playing nearly as well as they possibly can.

Batting with a freedom that was missing at Lord’s two days earlier, they peppered the advertising boards and Kevin Pietersen struck only his second Twenty20 international fifty from 31 balls. By the end the crowd resembled a football audience: England supporters chanted, many Pakistan followers left early.

Whoever decided to play a section of the Queen anthem We Are The Champions as England completed victory was acting prematurely because Paul Collingwood’s side will need to find consistency to match this performance in the Super Eights stage when they are likely to be in a group comprising South Africa, India and West Indies or Australia.

But they now have three days to rest, recuperate and consider what went right, just as they spent Saturday working out how the Netherlands debacle had been allowed to happen. The moral, surely, is to never under-estimate the opposition. Pakistan may not be the side of old, but England gave them due respect.

Luke Wright, the man of the match, and Pietersen put on 53 in 27 balls, Pietersen and Owais Shah then added 66 in 51, and with a nice little flourish from Dimitri Mascarenhas and James Foster in the last two overs the total of 185 was good enough to be able to defend with reasonable bowling and a concentrated effort in the field.

The inclusion of another all-rounder in Mascarenhas at the expense of Robert Key, righting an evident wrong of two days earlier, gave Collingwood an extra option and allowed the retention of Adil Rashid alongside the recalled Graeme Swann without severely detracting from the prominence of seam in the attack.

England had been influenced in selection by the way that the South Africa slow bowlers, along with Scotland’s Majid Haq, made the ball turn and grip earlier in the afternoon. The pitch was being used for the fourth game in two days but it also had enough pace to give strokemakers every chance to swing their arms.

What Collingwood and his colleagues could not have imagined was the help that Pakistan would offer as they spilt four catches and allowed too many balls to squirm through their hands along the ground. Had Saeed Ajmal held a difficult return catch by Pietersen on 30 then the consequences may have been dramatic. Ajmal was still the pick of the Pakistan attack and there are echoes of Saqlain Mushtaq in his well-disguised doosra.

Against the Netherlands, England stalled at the fall of the first wicket; a worrying precedent as Ravi Bopara succumbed to the eighth ball this time. But that defeat clearly had a liberating effect and Wright soon pulled Mohammad Aamer, a 17-year-old left-arm bowler discovered by Wasim Akram, for the first of six sixes in the innings overall. Pietersen hit three of them, his sharp running confirming that the injection to ease his Achilles problem had done the trick. Both he and Shah looked to stoop low and drag the spin bowlers into the leg side. Some of the placement could not have been better, but it was Wright who had imbued the innings with confidence, striking 34 from 16 balls.

Pakistan were 22 runs behind after six overs, which would not have been so critical but for the loss of Kamran Akmal and Salman Butt to the last two balls under fielding restrictions. Both mistimed aggressive shots off Stuart Broad and Butt’s dismissal bordered on the criminal because it left two new batsmen to rebuild.

They were an experienced pair, mind, in Younus Khan and Shoaib Malik, but Collingwood took the opportunity to bring on Rashid and Swann in tandem knowing that any period of consolidation could not last long given the rising run rate now required, and a stand of 46 from 40 balls left them a long way behind.

Younus may have taken into account England’s poor record at setting targets when he opted to bowl, but the drawback was in having to bat during the greyest part of another dreary London evening under lights. Rashid was treated with great respect and justified his place with four tidy overs that went for a run a ball.

If Collingwood could claim a plus for that, then he made another strong call when he introduced Wright into the attack to entice Malik to edge an attempted drive to Foster. So Shahid Afridi, who should have been promoted to open, arrived with 99 needed from 46 balls and England as upbeat as they had been downcast on Friday.

Scoreboard from The Oval

England
R S Bopara c Malik b Aamer 5
L J Wright b Gul 34
K P Pietersen c Gul b Ajmal 58
O A Shah b Gul 33
*P D Collingwood c Afridi b Ajmal 15
A D Mascarenhas not out 16
† J S Foster not out 14
Extras (lb 3, w 4, nb 3) 10
Total (5 wkts, 20 overs) 185

A U Rashid, G P Swann, S C J Broad and J M Anderson did not bat.

Fall of wickets: 1-9, 2-62, 3-128, 4-152, 5-156.

Bowling: Yasir Arafat 4-0-42-0; Aamer 3-0-31-1; Gul 4-0-37-2; Malik 1-0-13-0; Afridi 4-0-36-0; Ajmal 4-0-23-2.

Pakistan
Ahmed Shehzad c Collingwood b Mascarenhas 4
Salman Butt c Bopara b Broad 28
†Kamran Akmal c Wright b Broad 6
Shoaib Malik c Foster b Wright 20
*Younus Khan not out 46
Shahid Afridi c sub b Swann 5
Misbah-ul-Haq c sub b Anderson 10
Yasir Arafat c Wright b Broad 4
Umar Gul not out 8
Extras (lb 1, w 5) 6
Total (7 wkts, 20 overs) 137

Mohammad Aamer and Saeed Ajmal did not bat.

Fall of wickets: 1-13, 2-41, 3-41, 4-87, 5-102, 6-117, 7-129.

Bowling: Mascarenhas 2-0-14-1; Anderson 4-0-30-1; Broad 3-0-17-3; Rashid 4-0-24-0; Swann 4-0-27-1; Wright 3-0-24-1.

Umpires: B R Doctrove (West Indies) and D J Harper (Australia).