In his exclusive diary for CricInfo Alec Stewart reflects on a great win in Colombo.

Well, we've done it! We have achieved our second series win of the winter and we regard it as a fantastic result.

Great Team Spirit Photo CricInfo

At the start of our travels, had anyone offered the chance of returning home without having lost a series, we would have taken it and to come back having won them both is a brilliant effort. Nasser Hussain said before this tour that he thought it would be harder than Pakistan, and I can say now that he was not wrong! The playing conditions are that much harder and to have gone one down after the First Test and then come back to win two-one is tremendous. Without wanting to sound bigheaded, I think all the praise we have received has been well deserved. It's been a hard winter with the type of cricket played and to play six matches and win both series is a tremendous effort.

A lot has been made of our team spirit, and it has been fantastic. But, to be honest, I have been playing cricket for England for more than a decade now and the spirit has always been fine; that has never been a problem. The difference now is that there is a confidence within the camp. We get into winning situations and we have the confidence to go on to win. In the past we might not have recognised those winning situations and so have lost the chance to win the game and often lost the match as well as the chance of winning.

Now we have the belief that we can win. This has been evident for the last 12 months, but has been very obvious in the last two matches when in tight situations on difficult wickets we have come through to beat a very good side on their home territory.

A lot of this belief in the team stems from continuity of selection. If you get selected as a newer player, you're generally given four or five games to prove yourself. In the past, it was often the case that a player was given one chance and, if he failed, he was out. Without having to look over your shoulder quite so much it makes it easier to settle in. It is a hard enough game as it is and it takes time to settle into international cricket and I think the new policy is paying off.

Much of the credit for this must go to Duncan Fletcher. He is very, very good with people. His man management skills are excellent, and he has a happy knack of letting people know when they've done well. A lot of people will criticise and then forget when to praise, whereas he is very good at both. He will not criticise unnecessarily, and at the same time he does not praise unnecessarily. He is always fair with people and has the ability to get individuals to talk. That is not always easy as some are more ready to do so than others. However, he gets people to talk about their game and look at areas where they need to improve and where they could improve. Overall, there is huge respect for him.

We needed that sort of figure behind us, especially in the type of match we have just played. It all happened so quickly. In a way, the pressure of the situation was relieved by the fact it did happen so quickly. We started the third day trying to get level with them if not actually establishing a useful lead. As it turned out we were near enough level, but to then bowl them out in a session was not really in the script at the start of the day. To have it all over by the end of the day was extraordinary.

Thorpe - batting strength Photo CricInfo

Graham Thorpe was terrific and has confirmed with his batting throughout the winter that he now deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as any of the world's top batsmen. In this last match he was outstanding, holding the first innings together and then leading us to victory in the second.

When we had that small total to chase, we were determined that it would be over that night. That's the way the Australians would have gone about it. They are the best side around in world cricket and we decided that we would take the same approach. We knew we might lose a few wickets in doing so, and there might have been a slight hiccup when I got out, but we always knew we were going to win. It never entered our heads that we were going to lose.

This defines the change of attitude in English cricket. In the past we might have taken 50 overs to knock those runs off, and it might have been a scramble in the end. In Colombo we decided to be positive, and even Michael Atherton was going down the wicket to the bowlers in only the third over of the innings. That just shows the positive belief within the team that now exists. It just shows that we are learning how to win, after a number of years when we learned how to lose.

Some people have suggested that we would have been cheered by the news from Calcutta that Australia had lost to India. In fact, from my point of view, it would have been good if they had remained unbeaten going into the Ashes series. We wanted to be the first side to have broken their winning streak. They are a level above anyone else and by the end of the summer we shall be able to judge just how far we've come in catching them up.

That is for the future. The end of this leg of the tour was a time for celebration and that is something we did particularly well. In Pakistan when we won we had to jump on the plane home about four hours after the result had been achieved. We could not celebrate then as we should have been able to, but here we won in three days, we had a great night, and the thousands of English supporters who have been here helped us. Now for the one-dayers.

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