England v Zimbabwe, NatWest Series, Bristol

Darren Gough: England's gunslinger

It was always the line in those melodramatic B movie westerns. The medic would peer and prod into the bullet wound while the hero struggled to say the words: "Give it to me straight, doc...."

The match between England and Zimbabwe was a western of sorts, in that it was played in Bristol, but if there was no wounded gunslinger to utter the line, England captain Michael Vaughan might well have felt like saying it.

He was armed with an all-pace attack to fire out the opposition, but instead of rifling every ball on target, his bowlers adopted a scattergun approach. They bowled enough good balls to get the job done, with the help of some pretty ordinary batsmanship from the Zimbabweans, but it is difficult to find a justified excuse for 16 wides in 25 overs.

The ball was swinging, umpires are very strict on no-ball judgments in one-day cricket and some of the calls were the result of excessive bounce. All fair comment. However, this was an attack chosen to do a job in a one-day international in these particular conditions.

The fact remains that swing is a potent weapon only when it is controlled, the umpires could and probably should have called a few more wides than they did, while the bounce was reasonably consistent and a ball banged in closer to the bowler's toes than the batsman's was always likely to balloon over the top.

As part of a plan to get the batsman onto the back foot and then follow it up with a yorker, it is worth the odd extra. However, it would be surprising if the management found the number of wides bowled acceptable, even if the opposition were bowled out for less than a hundred.

Now there is time to get it right for the final. There was a good, aggressive mood in the English approach that proved too much for an inexperienced Zimbabwean batting line-up. The question now is whether this policy can be harnessed in a way that will cause problems to Kallis, Gibbs and Co.

If England continue to bowl wides at this rate - a rate which would produce 32 in 50 overs - they would have only two chances of beating South Africa in the final. And, to quote another favourite line from westerns, "Slim's just ridden out of town."

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