Grant Flower revealed the secret of his success at Trent Bridge on Thursday by saying simply: "I just had to bat." Zimbabwe scored a shock win over hosts England and Flower starred with a stunning 96 not out when all seemed lost after his team had slumped to 15-4 chasing 192.
Afterwards, he said: "We had nothing to lose. We didn't have a lot of batsmen left but a lot of overs to bat in.
"If we had been chasing 240 or 250 it would have been a different story but we could afford to have a few dot balls. His captain Heath Streak was keen to mention the part played by his spin-bowlers, who between them bowled 24 overs for just 64 runs.

Streak said: "Ray Price has bowled superbly and Dougie Marillier backed him up well. They came on in the middle overs and maintained the pressure. "We backed them up in the field so it was always competitive out there."

England captain Michael Vaughan again looked short of ammunition with not enough batsmen to back up Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Flintoff and not enough bowlers to support Richard Johnson and Darren Gough.

On a personal level, Vaughan registered his sixth failure in six innings for England taking both Tests and one-dayers into account.

Vaughan said: "I think we got the best of the conditions but we didn't bat well enough.

"Full credit to Zimbabwe - they put us under pressure and then Grant Flower played a tremendous knock and they deserved to win.

"We probably missed a couple of chances, a couple of run-outs which we haven't done before."

Bureau Report