Andrew Strauss insists there is still plenty of room for improvement from England in the final ODI at Lord's as they search for a 4-1 series victory. The loss at The Oval on Wednesday ruined their chances of a clean-sweep and although Strauss maintains there is nothing to be gained from the series ahead of the Ashes, he does believe every win is important less than a year from a World Cup.
England will consider making changes for Saturday's game, with the possibility that players might be rested ahead of Bangladesh's tour. But Strauss doesn't want to risk Australia finishing the series with a pair of victories, after England's powerful start gave them a realistic chance of completing a whitewash.
"Having pretty much dominated the first three games, we don't want the series to finish 3-2," Strauss said. "It would not be the sort of way to finish the series we would have anticipated at 3-0 up. But we've got to play better than we did at The Oval, there's no doubt about that, and look back to what we've done well over those first three games and make sure we repeat it.
"We've had one hundred in the series, so you always want your top order to get hundreds, there's no doubt about that. That's an area we've identified that we can improve. As a batting unit I think we can probably play better than we have done. The bowling has been pretty good, the fielding his been pretty good, but there's still room for improvement in both of those disciplines as well."
One man England would love to see lift is Kevin Pietersen, who has shown promise during the series without making use of his starts. Pietersen has now gone 16 ODIs without a half-century, stretching back to the tour of India in November 2008, and Strauss said that while such a lean patch was unexpected, he had no concerns over Pietersen's form.
"You expect him to score runs consistently and he has done so much in the past," Strauss said. "What I would say is he has contributed in a lot of those one-day internationals without getting fifties. He's still the player that opposition teams fear the most in our side. If you see him playing in the nets, you know there's absolutely no reason to believe he's not going to go out and get a hundred tomorrow. We've got no concerns with him."
While victory for England would cap off an outstanding series, Australia will consider it a minor triumph if they come from 3-0 down to end up with a 3-2 scoreline. There have been some real positives for the visitors over the past two games, including the form of the pace trio of Shaun Tait, Doug Bollinger and Ryan Harris.
The Australians are also keen to take some momentum into their Twenty20s against Pakistan, which begin two days after the Lord's ODI. The coach Tim Nielsen said the group was in better spirits after the 78-run win at The Oval.
"We feel a bit better about ourselves," Nielsen said. "We were probably building to that game throughout the first three. It would be nice to finish 3-2. If we do that, we know we've played well tomorrow and it's probably a pretty fair reflection of the series."