COACH Andy Flower is confident Paul Collingwood’s previous experience of captaincy will help him lead England better second time around in the ICC World Twenty20 tournament.

Durham all-rounder Collingwood resigned as captain of England’s one-day and Twenty20 sides nearly a year ago after admitting the responsibility had affected his form in Test cricket, following a run of 24 innings without a century.

Despite having initial reservations about taking on the responsibility again for next week’s tournament, Collingwood, 33, was persuaded to resume the role and will lead England out for their opening game against Holland at Lord’s on June 4.

It represents a major turnaround for Collingwood, who struggled during the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 tournament in South Africa two years ago and misjudged the overs to such an extent against New Zealand that he failed to give Andrew Flintoff his full quota despite him being England’s most economical bowler.

Collingwood also had a mixed record as England’s Twenty20 captain, leading them to only one victory over Zimbabwe in the last World Twenty20 event, but Flower believes he will be much better for the experience this time.

‘‘I think a couple of things have changed for him now,’’ said Flower. ‘‘Firstly, it’s only Twenty20 cricket he’s captaining in and secondly he’s got the experience of giving it a go initially and that will hold him in very good stead.

‘‘I remember I captained the Zimbabwe side in two different spells and I would have been a much better captain in the second spell than I was in the first and I’m sure that will be the case with him – he will have learnt a lot.

‘‘He’s a slightly different cricketer to the one he was last time he captained, though. He’s certainly in much better form and feels more confident in himself and he’s also experienced the IPL, not playing but watching, and in a way he may have seen much more by doing that.

‘‘He’s also pretty comfortable with his knowledge of the game, which is a nice place to be. We have chatted, we have ideas of the sort of side we want, and he’s got pretty clear ideas of how he wants to go about stuff.’’ For all Flower’s support for Collingwood, the coach admits he would prefer just to be working with one captain for all teams – a situation which has been prevented by Andrew Strauss’ decision to opt out of consideration for Twenty20 cricket because he believes he is not playing well enough to merit selection.

It leaves England with a split captaincy situation they would prefer not to have, but Flower does not believe it will disrupt the current harmony in the squad in the build-up to the Ashes.

‘‘I don’t think it will disturb things, but I also don’t think it’s ideal,’’ admitted Flower.

‘‘In an ideal world you’d have one captain, but I think Colly is really looking forward to it.

‘‘He’s looking forward to the challenge and I think it might work okay.’’