Vaughan Back In Groove As England Draw

He was named in the line-up to face Queensland more as a fitness test for Thursday's opening Test at the Gabba than anything else.

Vaughan was forced to stand in the field for the best part of two days as Queensland piled up 582 and then proved he had not lost his timing with the bat to score a superb 127 and became the only England batsman to pass 50 in the innings.

It was his first innings since the final Test against India at the Oval following a knee operation in mid-September, and he crowned it by hitting a century against an attack featuring former Test seamer Michael Kasprowicz and emerging youngster Ashley Noffke.

Resuming overnight on 49, Vaughan hit a six and 27 other boundaries before falling to emerging off-spinner Nathan Hauritz just eight overs before tea as England, who were hoping to use the final day as batting practice, reached 322 for seven when bad light brought play to a halt.

Vaughan had to rely on a fair amount of good fortune to reach three figures. Having already been dropped on 45 the previous evening by Martin Love at slip, he was missed twice more in rare displays of fallibility from the normally electric Queensland fielding.

Vaughan's luck even extended to the manner in which he reached his century, pushing forward and edging wide of the slip cordon down to the vacant third man boundary later in the same over.

He had lost nightwatchman Matthew Hoggard in the first over of the morning when he pushed forward to the third delivery of the day from Kasprowicz and edged behind to give Wade Seccombe a diving catch without adding to his overnight score of one.

It took a further two overs before Vaughan reached his half-century, cutting Kasprowicz for his ninth four of his 65-ball innings to bring up the milestone, but his new partnership with Mark Butcher was running far from smoothly in the early stages.

Twice Butcher could have been run out, but he recovered to drive two boundaries off Kasprowicz as he looked for his first major score of the tour.

But having only reached double figures once since the start of the tour, Butcher fell five runs short of recording his first half-century since his arrival in Australia when he edged the first delivery after lunch from Ashley Noffke behind.

Hussain had also fallen to the spin of Hauritz for 28 when he mis-timed a drive down the ground and fell to a superb diving catch from Kasprowicz in the deep while John Crawley became the young off-spinner's third victim when he edged to slip just before tea.

Andrew Flintoff also failed to make much of an impression before edging Lee Carseldine to slip for three shortly before bad light intervened to leave Alec Stewart unbeaten on 30 and Ashley Giles on seven.