Michael Vaughan's 106 on the fourth day against New Zealand silenced the doubters over his place in the Test line-up. There were glimpses of Vaughan's best, with his cover-driving in good order, but as Simon Barnes says in The Times it wasn't a vintage innings, yet does it really matter?

At one stage, coming in at 121 for one, he seemed to have the idea of filling his boots and forcing a win. Daniel Vettori changed his mind with three quick wickets, leaving Vaughan to play an intriguing half-and-halfer of an innings: leaving the ball a lot, spending plenty of time off strike, looking for ones and twos. But every now and then he would make that profound genuflection, right knee kissing the turf, as the prettiest cover drive in England made its little hop over the boundary rope, a shot breaking out of a cautious innings like Superman leaving a phone box.

In the Daily Telegraph, Simon Briggs says that Vaughan predicted he would make a hundred.

After Michael Vaughan's ropey start to the summer, there had been plenty of recent speculation over his form, focus and future. But the man himself is not given to self-doubt. At Monday's Vodafone dinner, he boldly predicted: "I'm going to make a hundred at Lord's."

Vaughan's ability as a soothsayer almost matches up to his talent as a batsman. He has had these flashes of certainty before, most notably in the lead-up to his comeback match at Headingley last year. "I was driving the car and just felt I had a hundred in me," he said then. "It was almost like it was destiny."

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