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Vaughan set for England return
England captain Michael Vaughan said he expected to be fit for the triangular series match against Zimbabwe on Tuesday.
England captain Michael Vaughan said he expected to be fit for the triangular series match against Zimbabwe at Headingley on Tuesday.
Vaughan, 28, missed England's six-wicket win over South Africa at The Oval on Saturday with back trouble and Marcus Trescothick was the stand-in skipper.
"I felt it before Thursday's game (where England lost by four wickets against Zimbabwe in the series opener at Trent Bridge) in the bottom of the lower left of my back. But the adrenalin and some tablets from Dean Conway (the England physiotherapist) got me through.
"But the four-hour drive down to London in a car didn't help much. I found it difficult to bend down. We've got a lot of cricket coming up and Dean and I decided it was not worth risking it," Vaughan added after Saturday's win.
"I had a scan which showed mainly tissue damage. Dean says that with a couple of days rest and treatment I should be all right for Tuesday's game."
Vaughan sat and watched Trescothick make an unbeaten 114 and Vikram Solanki 106 - his maiden one-day international hundred.
The openers put on 200 and became the first England batsmen to score one-day international centuries against South Africa as the team overhauled the Proteas' 264 for six with 25 balls to spare.
"It was a fantastic display to come back and play like that. It could have been easy for some of the young guys in an inexperienced side to fold," Vaughan said.
Vaughan was unstinting in his praise of Solanki. "He's such a fluent, natural batsman. We've just tried to get out of him the form he's shown for Worcestershire in the past three years.
"It's a huge milestone to get your first international hundred. To come and play like that, against a side like South Africa, to show that kind of character shows a great strength of mind."
Trescothick's innings merely confirmed the form he'd shown in England's 2-1 one-day series win against Pakistan where he made match-winning scores of 86 and 108 not out in the victories at The Oval and Lord's earlier this month.
"Tres had an idea from the way I was walking he'd be captaining. He took it all in his stride. He's playing very well. When Tres is going like he is at the minute he is a very formidable player."
But, despite the openers' dominance, England once again suffered a middle-order stumble which saw three wickets lost for three runs in 16 balls.
Vaughan, who normally bats at three in one-day games, admitted he had thought about dropping down a spot. "I was going to bat at four to try to help out in that middle period."
But Vaughan, who bats at the top in Test matches where he was the leading run scorer in 2002, added: "I won't be opening."
He admitted the indifferent form of middle-order, one-day newboys Robert Key and Jim Troughton was a concern but insisted: "You'd have probably said the same about Vik before today.
"Every game there is a chance for them to do something special and the guys have got the next few games to do it."
