Smith confident ahead of return series against Australia

Smith's own form in the VB Series in Australia has also been of concern © Getty Images

Despite Australia convincingly beating them in the recent Test and one-day series, South Africa's captain, Graeme Smith, is confident of turning round their fortunes on home soil. South Africa host Australia for a three-Test series and a clutch of ODIs, the first of which is at Centurion on February 26.

"We know that we can really turn around and play better cricket at home," he said. "We're all looking forward to getting home and performing there and that's our goal at the moment."

The South Africans have been on the road for three months: they arrived in Australia in early December after a trip to India, where they drew 2-2 with the hosts in a limited overs series. Their performances weren't assisted by a number of injuries to key bowlers, including Andre Nel, Makhaya Ntini and allrounder Jacques Kallis.

But Smith believes things will start to turn in their favour after they take a two-week break in the lead-up to the home series, and refused to blame fatigue for the team's results so far.

"Our excuse is that we've just really been terrible at our basics so far," he said. "We've got a lot of young guys playing the best team in the world in their own backyard and they probably realise now that they've got to do a lot of improving at their levels to match up at this level.

"Coming out of the Test series a lot of the guys that were here believed we could beat Australia. We didn't take our chances, we had them under pressure in a number of cases and we just didn't drive it home," he said. "I think if we can really get together, perform well, get the same things right and take our chances we certainly have the opportunity back home of beating Australia."

Smith also pinpointed the home crowd as a distinct advantage. South Africa have been at the receiving end of a vociferously partisan Australian crowd on their tour.

"It's always a huge asset to play before your home crowd. It definitely adds another 10, 20 per cent to your game," he said. "We're looking forward to that more than anything else."

When asked how he hoped the home crowd would treat the Australians following the racial abuse of South Africans during the tri-series, Smith joked: "Hopefully pretty harshly. I hope the South African people will be better behaved than some of the things that we've been through on this tour."