For England, it’s little more than a warm-up match ahead of much sterner examinations to come.

For Zimbabwe, it means everything.

Trent Bridge in Nottingham will host a four-day test match — something of a rarity for the usual five-day format but perhaps a sign of the future — from Thursday when England and Zimbabwe meet for the first time at international level in 18 years, since a Twenty20 World Cup match in Cape Town.

You need to go back four more years — to Chester-le-Street in 2003 when Jimmy Anderson, a 20-year-old with highlights in his hair, was playing in his first series — for the last test match between the teams.

Zimbabwe’s return to English soil continues the African nation's gradual reintegration to test cricket after two decades of political interference, poor governance and sanctions that resulted in the team being exiled from test cricket for around six years.

The Zimbabweans didn’t play a test from 2005-11. From 2022-24, they played just four tests. But between December last year and August this year, they’ll have played in 10 tests, with two-match series against South Africa and New Zealand to come this summer.

Zimbabwe still isn’t part of the World Test Championship but, in the bigger picture, progress is being made. Zimbabwe Cricket will receive a touring fee from the England and Wales Cricket Board for being the first test opponent of the summer, ECB chief executive Richard Gould confirmed last year while speaking about the “huge responsibility” to maintain the strength of bilateral cricket.

Zimbabwe isn't expected to offer much resistance to England, having slumped to a 138-run defeat to a Professional County Club Select XI in Leicester last week. Before that, however, it did earn a first test victory since 2021 — winning in Bangladesh on the way to sharing the series 1-1.

Debut for Cook

While Zimbabwe's view is very much about the present, England's sights will be on the future.

Ahead this summer is a five-test series against India and then an Ashes tour Down Under. For England, it doesn't get much bigger than that so the match against Zimbabwe will be important preparation, especially for a bowling department at the start of a new era following the test retirements of Stuart Broad (in 2023) and Anderson (last year).

For the Zimbabwe test, England will give a debut to Sam Cook, fellow pacer Josh Tongue is returning to the team after a two-year absence, and Gus Atkinson is about to start his second summer of test cricket. There are as many question marks about the only specialist spinner in the team, Shoaib Bashir, and the fitness of allrounder Ben Stokes, returning after a hamstring tear to regain the captaincy.

“I've got to be mindful of where I'm at and building myself back up to proper match workload for later on in the summer,” Stokes said Wednesday.

Then there's the batting lineup where opener Zak Crawley and No. 3 Ollie Pope have been retained despite continued speculation about their worthiness in the team. There's the welcome sight of a return for wicketkeeper Jamie Smith after missing the tour of New Zealand in November and December while on paternity leave.

England is No. 2 in the test rankings but coach Brendon McCullum said “there’s a lot of meat on the bone for us” in the next stage of the so-called “ Bazball ” era.

“When we took on a project like this, it was not about necessarily settling on ‘good,'" McCullum said. "I think now’s the time, working from a strong base, to be able to shoot for the stars and say, ‘Where can we take this team? What can we achieve?’”

The scheduling of a four-day test might be a blow to test purists but England home matches have rarely reached Day 5 under the leadership of McCullum and Stokes since 2022.

As for the Zimbabweans, they'll take whatever top-flight games they can on the long road back to cricket relevancy.