England won both of those series, none of those 12 were playing yesterday, only one, Thorpe, is here in Zimbabwe. This is not an excuse for defeat, it is just a fact.

Here's another. Not since the Barbados and Antigua Tests of England's 1993-94 tour of the Caribbean has the same team been selected to play in consecutive Test Matches. That is 30 Test matches ago. For 30 consecutive Test matches England have chosen a different team. This is an alarming fact.

Whose fault is this? The selectors? Possibly, but probably not, for what are they confronted by? By a sterile, unimaginative and outdated county system, which is producing cricketers too often of mediocre standard. And the mandarins at home still tell us that there is no need for change in our domestic game. Palpable, culpable even, nonsense.

Everyone around the England team, right down to the punters who travel abroad to pack the stands, is desperate for change so that we may win again and glow with pride, only no-one with power dares to tinker with tradition. Everyone is desperate for a new structure designed to bring the best from players rather than something which drives them into their insular shells of selfexamination and self-importance.

Cricket is a game which embraces life; county cricket, with its treadmill and lack of variety in its play, lack of flair or characters, means it no longer embraces life.

This touring party, which has some gifted people, is playing to a standard way below itself, save for the passionate Alec Stewart, who has been outstanding, the driven John Crawley, who is going that way, the positive Nick Knight, who was struck by aberration yesterday, and the talented pair Darren Gough and Robert Croft, who smile.

To play like this the team surely cannot be happy in their environment, can they. If you don't look as if you are having a good time, you seldom are.

By heavens, they had a bad time yesterday, blowing situation after situation, in which they had the game all but won. Situations that at home in a county match they would swallow and see you later in the pub for a pint. The difference here was that they were confronted by men with the bit between their teeth, men who did not have much fortune go for them, but men who thought nothing of losing the important toss or of umpiring injustice, men who knew they had to win for Zimbabwe.

And these men had a trump card. A leg-spinner, who began his bowling in the 24th over of the innings when the game was all but lost, delivered nine overs for 27 runs, and took three wickets to change the picture.

Lord MacLaurin, the new man in charge of the English game, watched yesterday and stood at the moment of defeat to shake the hands of the power of Zimbabwe cricket who sat alongside him.

He must have envied them and, if he was not sure of the size of his new job before, he will be now. Perhaps, after this month in Zimbabwe, even the self-interested at home, who appear not to care for the England team, will allow him to get on with it.