'I want the team to play our own game': Arthur

MIckey Arthur: 'We should not worry about what they do, but rather play to our own strengths' © Getty Images Enlarge

Mickey Arthur, the newly appointed coach of South Africa, has asked his team to stick to their own gameplan on the tour to Australia in December 2005.

"When we play against them at the end of the year I want the team to play our own game and not try and follow their play," Arthur was quoted as saying in News24.com website. "When they bat at four runs per over I don't want us to try and bat at four-and-a-half runs to the over. We should not worry about what they do, but rather play to our own strengths and as well as we possibly can."

The tour includes three Tests and a triangular series also involving Australia and Sri Lanka, and Arthur said that there was a possibility the team might leave a week early to fit in an extra warm-up game before the first Test, which starts on December 16. "We'd like to play such a game at the WACA where the Test is being played. The match against Western Australia can't be played on that pitch because it will then be prepared for the Test."

Speaking about Australia's below-average one-day show against England, Arthur said, "There seem to be a few cracks in the ODI team, but with the return of Shane Warne their Test side is still tops. What I do like, however, is that they are increasingly being put under pressure and they don't seem to handle it very well. Their major problem is that the senior players are not performing as expected."