Three-nil up, and with the ghosts of chicken-farmers past well and truly exorcised, England can afford to shuffle their pack for the fourth one-day international at Bulawayo tomorrow. One of the changes could be enforced: the calf niggle picked up by Nasser Hussain in Sunday's win should mean a first crack at the captaincy for Marcus Trescothick, widely regarded as a future Test captain. Even if he recovers, Hussain would surely be better off giving Trescothick a further taste of responsibility after his rather tentative start on Sunday, when he failed to intervene in the Foster-Flower fracas. If he takes over from the start, England might even win the toss.

Hussain's absence would also open up a space in the batting order for Owais Shah, who has been treated shoddily by the selectors after his classy entrance into international cricket in the NatWest one-day series in June.

But England should go further. Graham Thorpe has nothing to prove, and has a calf injury too, so why not bring Ben Hollioake – assuming he recovers from his own thigh strain – back into the middle order, or even give a game to Essex's Paul Grayson, whose only international appearance, against South Africa in Nairobi a year ago, brought a first-ball duck and no wickets. As England's former football manager Graham Taylor used to observe, you've got to experiment, and there will never be a better chance than now. A middle order of Shah, Paul Collingwood, Andy Flintoff and Hollioake or Grayson would be a great way to prepare for the future, although England may need to push the feisty James Foster up the order: he has yet to get a bat.

The only other member of the squad yet to get a game is Chris Silverwood. He could replace his fellow Yorkshire seamer Matthew Hoggard – who deserves a break after being the success story of the tour so far – and open the bowling with another fellow Yorkshire seamer, Ryan Sidebottom.

Zimbabwe, who may be without the injured Heath Streak, are in disarray and know that their best chance of victory is for Andy Flower to repeat the heroics of Sunday, when he made 142*. The problem is that an innings like that comes around as often as an England one-day series win away from home.

England lost six of their first eight one-dayers against Zimbabwe, but have now won 10 of their last 11, including the last six in Zimbabwe. It's important that they win at least one of the last two games: 3-2 would allow the Zims to take psychological points into the 2003 World Cup, when the two sides will meet at the group stage. It's a long way off, but as Australia demonstrated in the Ashes, mental scars can take a long time to heal.

Possible line-ups England 1 Marcus Trescothick (capt), 2 Nick Knight, 3 Owais Shah, 4 Mark Ramprakash, 5 Paul Collingwood, 6 Andy Flintoff, 7 Ben Hollioake or Paul Grayson, 8 James Foster (wk), 9 Jeremy Snape, 10 Chris Silverwood, 11 Ryan Sidebottom.

Zimbabwe 1 Alistair Campbell, 2 Guy Whittall (capt), 3 Andy Flower (wk), 4 Stuart Carlisle, 5 Craig Wishart, 6 Grant Flower, 7 Dion Ebrahim, 8 Douglas Marillier, 9 Doug Hondo, 10 Gary Brent, 11 Henry Olonga.

Follow the game at Wisden.com from 8.30am UK time on Wednesday with bulletins from Lawrence Booth throughout the day, stats and milestones in Record Collection as they happen, the Wisden Verdict at the close, Nasser Hussain's Captain Calling column in the evening, and a free trial of our Subscriber Scorebox, which carries pictures and instant comment as well as the score.

Player profiles
Marcus Trescothick
Owais Shah
Chris Silverwood

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