The onus was on England's record-breaker Paul Collingwood and new batting find Jonathan Trott to keep an awkward chase on course in pursuit of South Africa's 250 for nine at Centurion.

With the prize a 1-0 lead in a five-match one-day international series, England's third-wicket pair came together at 45 and by the 30-over mark had batted sensibly on the way to 140.

Collingwood (52no) - marking his 171st ODI cap and passing England's previous benchmark set by Alec Stewart - was one of the likeliest to prosper on a pitch of uneven but mostly sluggish pace.

The conditions had played to his advantage with the ball too as he took two wickets to help restrict a South Africa innings propped up by half-centuries from Hashim Amla (57) and Alviro Petersen (64).

Collingwood also showed his prowess with some typical brilliance in the field, on a day when England put down five catches.

The tourists lost two of their most plausible match-winners, Andrew Strauss and Kevin Pietersen, cheaply as they began their reply.

Strauss, opening with a new partner in Trott (62no), fell in the eighth over when he aimed to clip Charl Langeveldt to leg but instead looped a simple catch to point off a leading edge.

That brought Pietersen to the crease, to a predictably mixed reception in front of a partisan crowd in the country of his birth.

He got under way with a trademark whipped drive through straight midwicket off Langeveldt but was unable to add to that boundary before trying the same trick against new bowler Albie Morkel and getting a thin inside edge on to leg-stump.

But Trott and Collingwood were then content to simply keep England in the equation with accumulation.