Andy Flower's century in vain

HARARE, OCT. 7 England scored its third win in-a-row beating Zimbabwe by four wickets here on Sunday.

Mark Ramprakash top scored with 47. Andrew Flintof hit 46 and Nick Knight added 41 to help England to an easy win.

Earlier Zimbabwe's finest batsman Andy Flower had angry thoughts for his colleagues and heated words for England as he blasted and finessed his way to a century of high quality. His 142 in 128 balls, including a six and 16 fours, enabled Zimbabwe to reach 261 for 8, easily its highest score so far against the tourists in a five-match international series.

The series moves to Bulawayo next week for the final two games. Flower's third one-day century, which reasserted his world class after two failures, was born out of an early Zimbabwe collapse which clearly irritated him. And when he was on 99 he had an exchange of words with some England fielders, notably wicket- keeper James Foster who apparently thought he had taken a catch off the bowling of Paul Hollingwood.

Flower had seen four top order colleagues lose their wickets to poor shots, Grant Flower, Alistair Campbell, Craig Wishart and Stuart Carlisle making only 14 runs between them. The left-hander decided to assault the England bowlers. He took risks but his class held up, especially when he cooled off in partnership with Dion Ebrahim 22 and one of 130 for the seventh wicket with Heath Streak, who slammed 56. It was a one-day record for this wicket.

Zimbabwe had been three down for 19 and four down for 56, England's most successful bowler Matthew Hoggard grabbing three in his first spell, later rounding off with five wickets for 49. From a desperate situation early on for Zimbabwe the spectre of Andy Flower emerged to propel the Zimbabwe score..

- AFP.

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