Limited overs venues

England will hope to find their form in the one-day arena

Kimberley - Athletic Club Ground

Kimberley is diamond country, the place where Cecil Rhodes, and many others after him, made a fortune and De Beers Consolidated Mines was established.

England will face Zimbabwe at Kimberley

Inevitably the only remarkable features are diamond related, to the point where there is a cruel, but perhaps fair, saying that The Big Hole - one of the legacies of diamond mining which, with a circumference of 1.5km, is the largest hole in the world dug entirely by manual labour - should instead refer to the town itself.

Two of the five grounds on which first-class cricket have been played - the somewhat contradictorily named De Beers Diamond Oval and the De Beers Stadium - are testament to the history of the place and a third, the Christian Brothers College, confirms an essentially Afrikaner culture.

Griqualand West, the provincial side, have played at all three but the chief location for cricket in the region is at the Athletic Sports Club, where England meet Zimbabwe in a one-day international on January 30.

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Bloemfontein

When England were in Bloemfontein for their match against Free State earlier in the tour, the players made no effort to hide the fact that there was little to detain them once the game had ended.

England's first one-day international will be at Bloemfontein

The very name conjures images of the Afrikaner element in South Africa's diverse cultural make-up, and the staunch puritanism that comes with it.

Hansie Cronje and Allan Donald are the best known of the Bloem brigade in the current South African side - and Cronje is not exactly one for smiling incessantly in the field.

Goodyear Park - or Springbok Park as it was know to all until recently - has just staged its first Test Match, against Zimbabwe, becoming the 80th Test venue, and came through the trial pretty well.

If it didn't have Zimbabwe raving about the surface after they had been bundled out for 192 and 212, the South Africans weren't complaining, having scored 417 in their only innings of the match.

The ground doubles as a rugby venue during the winter and, as South Africa's newest cricket ground, its floodlights are said to be the best in the country. It has a capacity of 20,000.

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East London

The evocatively named Buffalo Park in East London is home to Border province, just up the coast from Port Elizabeth. It is the smallest ground in South Africa with limited stands (capacity 15,000) but, typical of local venues, has excellent facilities, including floodlights.

England will be hoping that it won't be a bad day at East London

With a small-town feel, there is no reason why the unhurried traveller would want to move on with any haste.

Its principal beach rivals many of the world's most famous surfing and swimming spots, although the over- excited member of the Barmy Army will be pretty disappointed if he travels to the main street, Oxford Street, hoping for bright lights and action.

For the more cultured tourist, the museum is the location of the world's only Dodo egg.

The ground gets its name from the Buffalo River, on which the port is built.

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Queen's Sports Club, Bulawayo

The Queens Sports Club has a long history, having been established not long after Bulawayo was declared a town, in 1894, but between 1984 and 1994 no first-class cricket was played there as it slipped into a state of disrepair.

The batting surface will be typically slow at the Queens Sports Club

All important matches were, instead, staged at the Bulawayo Athletic Club until the Matabele Cricket Association realised the potential in the Sports Club.

It has been transformed into a venue fit for Test cricket, whilst retaining the sleepy, unchanging atmosphere of Bulawayo, a town in which the streets are the width of boulevards, a legacy of the days in which wagons pulled by oxen required the space to perform U-turns.

There are plans for further redevelopment, involving stands and additional facilities, but true to the pace all things in Bulawayo, no one is holding their breath.

Only when they had no option but to build did they react with haste when, in 1942, a smouldering cigarette set alight the wooden and iron double-storey edifice of the old pavilion and gutted the building.

The batting surfaces are typically slow and spongy with scores that would appear to be modest elsewhere in the world often proving challenging to sides batting second.

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Harare Sports Club

The Harare Sports Club has recently been through major redevelopment, improving and expanding the seating area, increasing the size of the square and applying the odd lick of paint to surroundings buildings.

England will contest two games against Zimbabwe at the Harare Sports Club

Encouragingly, the colonial feel of the Dutch Gable architecture of the pavilion remains and, even more encouragingly, the Keg and Maiden, the pub which sits on the midwicket or cover boundary, is still there serving chilled Castle, Zambezi and Bholinger lager.

The Sports Club is the home ground of Mashonaland and the Zimbabwe Cricket Union offices and was the venue for both the nation's first Test match, in 1992, and first Test victory two years later.

Surrounded by Jacaranda trees, there is a tranquil splendour to the ground, although not when Castle corner is occupied and the beer vendors are in residence.

A combination of the Castle corner inhabitants and the Barmy Army at around 4.45pm would be a noisy, if entertaining, one.

The atmosphere might just be a tad different to that in 1956, when MCC played Rhodesia in front of what is still the largest crowd at the ground, 26,000.