PAUL Collingwood's recent assertion that he is "always impressed with Scotland as an outfit" will be as rigorously tested this winter as his own coaching credentials.

Collingwood's appointment as a batting, bowling and fielding coach, and above all a guru of mind control, to an inexperienced Scotland side was a declaration of intent by Pete Steindl and Cricket Scotland. Whether it was bold or desperate depends on your interpretation, and perhaps neither viewpoint is entirely cock-eyed.

What it will do, apart from tell the outside world that we are still serious about cricket in this country, and especially serious about taking part in World Cups, is sharpen the wits of the national squad. An Irish observer in whom I place a lot of trust watched the recent Intercontinental Cup mismatch in Dublin and reported back that Steindl was invisible throughout. Nothing new in that, I thought - a coach can conceivably detect more useful intelligence from his laptop during a game than his eyes, and therefore have more power to change it.

What followed, however, was the more startling observation that Scotland's players reminded my source of a group who were trying to get the coach sacked - and the ringleader forgot to tell Safyaan Shafiq and Majid Haq, whose runs in the lower order filtered the humiliation.

Now, I am no fan of the Intercontinental Cup but for most of Scotland's home-based players it has become a platform for audition. Play well and work hard and you might create a reputation and no longer be automatically overlooked when the county professionals turn up. I don't believe for a second that any of Preston Mommsen's players were deliberately under- performing in order to accelerate change in the coaching department, but the fact that their collective demeanour even hinted at apathy is cause for concern.

Without wishing to undermine Steindl, who I am sure said things to his team in private at Clontarf that would be central to any critique of his abilities as national coach, it is conceivable that Paul Collingwood and Craig Wright will have more power to inspire these insecure and unworldly cricketers, who have suffered far more violent beatings than is appropriate for sportspeople their age.

If Collingwood is impressed with Scotland after his first "getting to know each other" training camp in advance of the Twenty20 qualifiers, he will have to have travelled up the A1 with some pretty low expectations. But then, maybe part of the problem is that these players look like world- beaters in training, but can't handle the heat of combat. Collingwood has been a dog of war on the playing field, and will surely add something of value in this area.

It was David Boon who taught the young Durham buck not to worry if other players were blessed with a more attractive cover drive or could generate more pace from 22 yards, because top-level sport is "played 90 per cent in the mind".

It is a safe bet that Collingwood will be a more inspirational presence in the dressing room than the last tough nut from the north of England who came up to show us how it's done. Jim Love had his merits, I am sure, as a director of cricket who oversaw nearly a decade of important progress. But my experience of his motivational capacities was almost entirely negative.

Two anecdotes - and I stress that this analysis is anecdotal.

During a residential training camp in Musselburgh for Scotland's most talented under-15s (there had been a terrible pox that winter, and I was hunting for autographs at a NatWest Trophy match at Myreside when asked to attend), there was much anticipation about the evening video-review session.

This was the early 90s and most of us had never seen our games played back on video before, but for me what followed was an honest appraisal of my batting that pretty much removed any ego I was carrying at the time. Rather than absorb some firm technical suggestions from the most qualified coach I had encountered thus far, my abiding memory is of Jim making an observation along the lines of: "Dear oh dear, what's all this then?"

After the session came the pep talk, and the old Yorkshire warhorse, whose grit I had admired on TV while watching him dominate one-day games with my Dad and brother, told the story of how he made his breakthrough as a Yorkshire player by scoring a hundred in the county championship, only for Geoffrey Boycott to return from England and take his place.

Fast-forward about seven years to the naming of the Scotland squad for the 2001 ICC Trophy, and as a journalist in attendance I asked Love how he felt his team compared to the collaboration of young and old amateurs (plus Gavin Hamilton) that had experienced a mostly painful World Cup debut two years earlier.

This was his chance to back his players in public, perhaps stress that due to a stronger operational structure they were the best-equipped group to have travelled to an international tournament.

"Well," he said. "They're a better fielding side than they were."

If Scotland have the triumphant winter that everyone who cares about the game in this country would wish them to have, it might have something to do with a cricketer who has all of Jim Love's northern tenacity but none of his begrudging bitterness.