The first one-day match (2 x 50 overs) on the tour was against Mashonaland at the Harare Sports Club, earlier known as the Salisbury Sports Club, the Test venue in Harare. The official residence of the Zimbabwean president Mr. Robert Mugabe is only a stone's throw from the ground.

Denmark won the toss and sensibly decided to field first. Mashonaland had nine Test players in their side and the red carpet was rolled out. Zimbabwe's coach David Houghton explained that this match against Denmark was part of Zimbabwe's preparations for the triangular tournament in Bangladesh against Bangladesh and Kenya and the World Cup in England.

Even though the Danish players were still feeling the after-effects of the long flight and the unusal playing conditions, they fought hard in the field. The two opening bowlers, Thomas Hansen (left-arm over) and Amjad Khan (right-arm over) bowled uninfluenced by the conditions and caused considerable problems for the Mashonaland batsmen. With only eight on the board, Morten Hedegaard catches Grant Flower off the bowling of Thomas Hansen, who moved the ball both ways off the seam. He has though to work on his rhythm and to use more of his body in the actual delivery of the ball. Amjad ``Billy'' Khan is a very fast bowler, but had today problems with his run-up and had difficulties in controlling the movement of the ball resulting in too many wides. Both these bowlers were well supported by first-change bowlers Morten and Lars Hedegaard with 2 for 33 and 3 for 24 respectively.

Unfortunately the team's two spinners had no success, as Søren Klitgaard and Peer Jensen were too easy to read for the experienced batsmen, who often used the sweep and reverse-sweep to great success. The exception was Peer Jensen's removal of Andy Flower with a fast arm-ball, where Flower cut once too many. Peer Jensen had thereafter no difficulty in ending the innings.

Carsten Pedersen back from New Zealand and Bajit Singh opened the batting for Denmark. Carsten was quickly given out lbw a decision queried a great deal from the outside. The only batsman who showed any promise was Lars Hedegaard with 38. Denmark were bowled out for 118 with 4 l.b.w decisions! Paul Strang is a class leg-spin bowler who, when he opens his bag of tricks with googlies, flippers and top-spinners, is too much for our batsmen.

It was no shame for us to lose to a better team and Mashonaland were better than we on the day were. We managed to show the many supporters and of course our opponents that our bowling standard is nearing world-class as well as our fielding, but we have to improve our batting.