The lasting memory of England's tour to Zimbabwe three years ago was of David Lloyd's "We murdered 'em" tirade after the drawn second Test in Bulawayo.

The controversial comments came after England got to within one run of their target but were denied victory when the home bowlers bowled unsportingly wide of the leg stump.

"Never mind," we thought. Nothing had been lost and there was still the one-day series to come.

Surely their good old English know-how and professionalism would win the day. How wrong can one can be.

It was the English authorities who had once protested most vehemently against Zimbabwe being granted Test status - under the lofty assumption that they would bring down the standards of the game - and the opposition players knew as much.

Zimbabwe played with hunger, athleticism and pride - England were apathetic, flabby in the field and nothing short of a national disgrace.

This was the Zimbabwe of a few years ago after all, supposedly the whipping boys of international cricket.

It was a whipping all right - 3-0 for the home side to be precise.

England could just about shake off losing the first match, in Bulawayo, where the Test had just ended acrimoniously.

Bundled out for 152 in 45.4 overs, chiefly to John Rennie's innocuous medium pace - a "bespectacled indigestion tablet" as Martin Johnson described the bowler in The Telegraph - Zimbabwe squeezed home by two wickets.

But what followed was calamitous.

Zimbabwe were dismissed for 200 in the second game and England started encouragingly enough, with Alec Stewart blazing his way to 41 from 37 balls.

Nasser Hussain was the mainstay, scoring 73, but, with the target reduced to a more demanding 186 from 42 overs, the batsmen were unable to impose themselves.

With wickets being gifted to the opposition, slowly but very surely the game drifted away until the uncomfortable reality finally dawned that that England had been beaten by seven runs and the series had been lost.

What England would have given to be shot of Zimbabwe at that stage but they had one more game to play and their humiliation was not yet complete.

Zimbabwe scored 249, by some margin the highest score of the series, to which England replied with a paltry 118 all out.

If that was not bad enough, England conceded a hat-trick to Eddo Brandes, the chicken farmer, and it was a pretty good hat-trick at that - Alec Stewart, caught behind down the leg side, John Crawley leg-before, and Nasser Hussain, caught behind off a late outswinger.

Now that, as England were reminded time and again, was what the Zimbabweans called "murder".