One of England's batting heroes on the first day of the fourth npower Test at The Oval, Mark Butcher, led the praise for the man with whom he put on 174 for the second wicket, Michael Vaughan. The Yorkshireman was 182 not out at the close of play to become only the fifth English batsman to record four Test hundreds in a summer following Herbert Sutcliffe, Denis Compton, Allan Lamb and Graham Gooch.

Butcher, who scored 54 hinself, said: "He is in magnificent touch, there was nowhere in the ground he couldn't hit the ball and it was a great pleasure to be batting with him.

"He didn't try and hit it too hard, he just timed everything and the ball kept going for four. Michael kept the scoreboard rattling around while I just stayed there. I was batting like a weasel and he was smashing it everywhere.

"The fact that he was playing well meant I could play myself in, work the ball around and knock singles around. That's twice now I've bored the crowd at one end while he's smashed it all over the place at the other.

"I think the main thing when you're playing like that is you don't think about much else, there's nothing going on in your mind. Every ball that comes down you have an answer for, it's very uncomplicated when you are playing that well."

Now the plan for England is to capitalise on the first day's work. "The plan is to bat all day and do what India did to us at Headingley, pushing the score to 500 or maybe 600," added Butcher. "The wicket hasn't got a tremendous amount of pace in it and it suits slow bowlers, it has turned already and will turn more as the match goes on.

"Winning the toss was huge, had either side won it they would have batted. It was a big relief to us and Sourav (Ganguly) would have been very disappointed to have lost it. There is still a hell of a lot of runs to score before we cannot lose or until we can dictate the game.

"If that score becomes 450 all out tomorrow we have made a mess of it. There was a lot of talk of India having the momentum in the series after Headingley but this proved you can't predict what's going to happen in a Test on what's gone before."

© CricInfo