Strauss: It's a tough tour

Strauss: Ignoring the hype

Anyone who thinks that we might be going easy on ourselves at the moment is off the mark.

Andrew Strauss
Quotes of the week

Related links

Teams

• England

Also see

• Sky Sports experts
• Scores
• Watch online
• Bet now
• Fixtures/Results

Andrew Strauss insists England will not be over-confident following their Ashes victory when they go into the series against South Africa.

Expectations are high after England recorded a 2-1 win over Australia in the summer, and although Strauss is confident his side can impress during the two-and-a-half month tour to South Africa he insists they must remain level-headed in their approach.

"I don't think any of us will get carried away or any of us have done," said the England captain.

"I think we're all aware that at this stage of our development, we're not the genuine article, not the finished product by any means.

"So anyone who thinks that we might be going easy on ourselves at the moment is off the mark.

"At the same time, this challenge comes at a good time for us having just won the Ashes, we've got some confidence there.

"I think more than anything, (it has given us) confidence in our ability to pull out performances when we really need them. So we need to draw on that because this is a tough tour and if we can go on and win the series here, that's going to be a massive achievement."

Conditions

England open the tour with a warm-up game against the Diamond Eagles on Friday, with two further friendlies ahead of back-to-back Twenty20 internationals against the Proteas.

They then play another practice match before a five-match one-day series then another two tour matches followed by the first Test, which starts on December 16.

England have a history of making poor starts to tours but Strauss believes having sufficient time to acclimatise should benefit his side.

"To a certain extent, we'll know the conditions well by the time the Tests start, which is something that people have always mentioned, a lack of practice matches," he said.

"So that's not going to be an excuse come the start of the Test series. But we still need to adapt well come the start of the one-day series.

"If you look in the past, we've had a number of times where we've started series poorly, both home and away.

"We've got a bit of a monkey off our back in England against the West Indies, but it's something that we're very conscious of - the difficulty of coming back from behind."