Wednesday, October 3, 2001 Well, that's a start. I'd talked about a "new culture" before the series started, and I suppose we went about 10% of the way down the track to that today. It's only a small step, but at least we've got that 11-successive-defeats monkey off our backs. People should also remember that those losses were all to pretty good sides – Sri Lanka away, then Australia and Pakistan, who were in the last World Cup final.

We shouldn't get carried away. You don't go from mid-table to world champions in two weeks in Zimbabwe. But hats off to Duncan Fletcher for suggesting the tour – he realised we had work to do in one-day cricket and this trip was arranged. We could have all been sitting on our arses at home waiting for the India tour to start – instead we're out here with a youngish side trying out some new things.

We haven't played enough one-day cricket in the past, and we need to if we're going to be competitive in the World Cup. Zimbabwe have played 30 one-dayers in the last year, while we've only played 11 – and I've only played in two of those.

Today's match wasn't anywhere near as "turgid" as I'd predicted, was it? The pitch wasn't exactly a belter, but it was better than the ones we'd been practising on, which always makes it seem even better than it is. It was a good even pitch, quite quick. The ball skidded on a bit at first, and our new opening pair of Matthew Hoggard and James Kirtley bowled very well on it.

The real difference between the sides was the 15-over scores – Zimbabwe were about 40 for 2 and we had 80 for 1. Which goes to show how well our openers bowled, and how well Nick Knight and I did when we batted. It wasn't all good news – our throwing-in was very poor, and I thought we took our foot off the gas a bit near the end. It would have been better to keep on going for it and try to win inside 40 overs. But as I've said, you can't do it all at once.

Hoggard and Kirtley bowled brilliantly, but the other two new boys did well too. Stuart Carlisle and Andy Flower were just starting to get away from us when Jeremy Snape came on and took those two wickets in an over. Man of the Match on debut, you can't argue about that.

And James Foster had a good day. He'll be pleased to get that one under his belt. His first stumping was very slick, but that dropped skyer was a bit embarrassing! Funnily enough, he'd come up to me yesterday and asked if I ever fielded in sunglasses. I said I didn't, although people kindly keep giving me free pairs, because I couldn't really get on with them in the field. He said he was the same, but hoped he didn't get a huge swirler straight into the sun ...

This pitch was OK, as I said, but with two matches coming up at the weekend we could be grubbing around a bit on Sunday and the ball could be turning. A lot. So you might hear that word "turgid" again then. It's certainly not the groundstaff's fault – they've done wonders here in what is Zimbabwe's dry season and with such a lot of cricket being played on a smallish square.

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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