Wednesday, October 10, 2001 I was pleased that we made it 4-0 today, but I'd be even happier with 5-0 after Saturday. That's what we came here for, to win and to have a look at some new players. We've gone about 90% of the way to those objectives and I'd like to nail that last 10%.

I'm hoping to play on Saturday -- my calf isn't too bad and I suppose I'm about 80% fit. I was able to get up and down the pitch in the last game, after all. But it seemed silly for me to play when I wasn't fully fit. If I'd pulled the muscle properly I'd have been out for six weeks and doubtful for India -- and in any case we wanted to look at some other players, so I sat this one out. I don't enjoy watching very much, though, and I hope to be out there again on Saturday.

If I do play I suppose I should send Marcus Trescothick out to do the toss! I'd have lost it again today, as I've been calling heads and I was going to do that again. He called tails and won, and there was an awful lot of chat about that in the dressing-room. I've had a look at the coins and they all seem to have a head and a tail on them, so I'll be calling heads again on Saturday and we'll see what happens...

It was important that we batted first today. Then Marcus and Knighty had a hugely impressive stand -- they're turning into a fine-looking opening pair -- and we had 100 up inside the first 15 overs. Then there was a bit of a wobble, but realistically you're not going to dominate throughout the whole 50 overs of a one-day innings very often. Collingwood and Flintoff did their stuff again, and we were back on track.

At the start it looked like a 270 wicket, and we got 280 so that wasn't far out. Actually the pitch didn't play quite as well as it looked, so I suppose our score was a bit better than par.

I thought our bowling was a bit sloppy at the start. You should set out to protect a score of 280 as if it's 200, and we didn't really do that at first. But then the bowling improved. Paul Grayson had a good day.

The fielding was a bit off, too. That's two good performances in the field and two poor ones that we've had, so Saturday is the decider on that score. I'll be giving the boys a bit of a boot up the back-side over that. The outfield here isn't quite as good as at Harare -- both sides struggled a bit today -- but that isn't much of an excuse. James Foster did well, though -- he's settling down nicely.

After the ructions on Sunday there didn't seem to be a word out of place this time. We won quite easily in the end, and you don't tend to get incidents when that happens -- it's usually in close games that tempers flare a bit. It happens occasionally.

Apparently there's talk now that our Indian tour might have to be cancelled. Personally I'd love to play in India -- I never have, and I was born there -- but obviously what's going on in the region is on a much bigger scale to anything we've seen recently. It won't be me or Duncan Fletcher or one single person at the ECB that decides what to do -- a lot of people will have to sit down and discuss it.

Nasser Hussain was talking to Steven Lynch. Captain Calling will appear exclusively at Wisden.com after each game in the Zimbabwe-England series.

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