Flower pleased with progress

Flower: Coping with injuries

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England coach Andy Flower insists confidence is high heading into the one-day series against South Africa, despite a number of players facing a race against time to be fit for Friday's opener.

The tourists warm-up for the first of five ODIs with a 50-over encounter against South Africa A in Potchefstroom on Tuesday.

Four first-team players will miss the match through injury however, James Anderson (knee), Stuart Broad (shoulder) and Graeme Swann (intercostal muscle) all remain sidelined after missing Sunday's Twenty20 defeat at Centurion.

And vice-captain Paul Collingwood (back) is also out of the warm-up match, the all-rounder picking up his injury during the first Twenty20 international at the Wanderers.

Setbacks

Despite the injury concerns, coach Flower has been pleased with his side's tour preparations, which saw England overcome a number of setbacks to draw the two-match Twenty20 series.

"Our preparation in Bloemfontein was excellent - they were great hosts, the facilities were good, so that preparation went as well as we could have hoped," he said of the start to the two-and-a-half month tour.

"The warm-up games were good, of course we would have liked to have won on Sunday but that wasn't to be, so we go into the one-day series feeling good about ourselves."

Friday's ODI at the Wanderers kicks-off another bumper winter of cricket for England's players.

Flower's men must travel to Bangladesh after the five one-dayers and four Tests against South Africa, and when asked if he was concerned with the schedule, the former Zimbabwe batsman said: "Yes, I am. We had a very heavy summer, then three weeks off and then we started again with gusto in Bloemfontein.

"We worked really hard and unfortunately we have picked up some of these niggles."

Rest time

The three weeks that Flower was referring to was the break England had between the ICC Champions Trophy and the tour to South Africa.

With the current international cricket calendar becoming so congested, Flower revealed that it may lead to a future which sees his players allocated a rest period.

He added: "Ideally you need bigger chunks of time to get the proper conditioning into people. Of course on a two-and-a-half-month tour like this, the guys work extremely hard both on the field and off it.

"Trying to get that balance right between rest time, conditioning time, practice time and competitive time, is quite difficult. So yeah, three weeks off is not an ideal length of time.

"I think in the future we are going to have to target certain periods for strengthening, condition programmes for some of these fast bowlers especially and for them to miss the odd international because of it."