Buck back after injury with second place in 400m race

With her thrilling displays, Ennis made light of the burden of captaining the home side to victory in the annual five nations match against Germany, Sweden, the United States and a Commonwealth Select side.

She was aided by Richard Buck (City of York) who had a sound outing on his return from injury with second place in the 400 metres. After a modest start, Buck picked up well to place second at the break and only narrowly failed to close the gap on America's Jamaal Torrance. Buck, now based at Loughborough, clocked 47.26.

He said, "I'm happy with the time, I don't think I did myself justice out there, I'm a lot fitter than that race showed. Jamaal managed to race it better so I have to take that."

Competing for the Commonwealth Select team, Luke Cutts (Dearnside High) upstaged his fellow GB pole-vaulter Steve Lewis with his 5.50metre clearance but both were beaten for maximum points by Germany's Bjorn Otto who had one less failure than Cutts in reaching 5.50m.

Cutts had two failures at 5.60m and one at 5.70m which would have been a massive personal best.

Middlesborough's Chris Tomlinson won the long jump with 7.99m.

He was consistent with five jumps over 7.77 but it will have been frustrating to fall short of the eight-metre mark.

Five individual victories saw the British team win a close contest against the USA.

World 800m bronze medallist Jenny Meadows set the ball rolling with a comfortable victory in two minutes 02.53 seconds.

Meadows, who is eyeing another podium finish at the world indoors, said: "I felt really comfortable and a win's a win."

Further victories from Leon Baptiste over 200m, Helen Clitheroe in the 3000m and long jumper Tomlinson saw a host nation win hinge on Craig Pickering in the last event, the 60m.

Pickering came up trumps, roaring to a fourth successive victory in 6.66secs, 0.02secs quicker than American rival Mark Jelks. The former European silver medallist might have gone to his blocks with a more comfortable lead than two points if Lisa Dobriskey had clinched victory in the 1500m.

But the world silver medallist was caught on the line by Heidi Dahl of the USA.