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Andrew Strauss is usually as affable as international captains come, but despite his upbeat sentiments, there was no disguising the exhausted despondency with which he addressed the media in Johannesburg on Wednesday, as England prepared to face the music in a one-day competition that has humiliation stamped all over it. True, they arrive in the country boasting a winning streak of one match, after denying Australia a 7-0 whitewash in the final ODI of the English summer on Sunday, but even in that irrelevant face-saver, they still shipped six wickets chasing 177.

And now, with respect to an Australian side that may be the reigning Champions Trophy champions but are still in an undeniable rebuilding phase, England prepare to face a team that really knows how to play one-day cricket. Sri Lanka simply hammered the much-fancied tournament hosts, South Africa, in the opening match on Tuesday. Tillakaratne Dilshan’s majestic hundred put the match out of reach, as the wiles of Ajantha Mendis proved too canny to allow a 300-plus target to be pursued with any confidence – even for a team stacked with the sort of power-players that England can only dream of.

In the absence of Kevin Pietersen (who has scored two of England’s three ODI hundreds since January 2008 – a tally that even Scotland has surpassed) and latterly Andrew Flintoff and even Luke Wright, England lack batsmen who can break the shackles, and raise the tempo. Strauss has been batting like a dream all summer, but even at his most imperious, he is still a man for whom an 80.00 strike-rate is a pacey tempo – hence his unfortunate habit during the Australia ODIs of getting out when well set, usually while attempting a reverse-sweep or similar, shots that his colleagues ought to have been producing while he continued to anchor the innings.

Strange results are possible in 50-over cricket – let’s not forget, when England were last humiliated by Australia in a one-day campaign, in Australia in 2006-07, they somehow emerged with the CB Series trophy in their luggage, after Paul Collingwood stitched together back-to-back victories in the finals. But they’ve never yet won an ICC global event, and they’ve rarely looked less ready to break that habit. The rarefied atmosphere of the Highveld is no place for weary cricketers.

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