Learning from defeats will help our future: Strauss

Dubai: England skipper Andrew Strauss wants to use the series defeat against Pakistan as a learning curve and go on to do well in the third Test at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium commencing Friday.

"We're very clear in our own minds that you got to use losses and tough times as a basis of learning and moving on and I think we have learnt a lot already and that learning will stand us in good stead both in this Test match and in the future as well," said Strauss, who went on to explain how gloomy it was for the team after the second Test defeat and how they have managed to overcome it.

"In the first 24 hours after the second game its obviously fairly bleak mood in the dressing room and rightly so because we felt we should have won that game, but then things pretty quickly start turning to OK well that's gone what can we do now going forward. We had quite a few chats about us moving forward in the medium and long term not just in the short term for this game as well. So there's a real kind of will and desire and motivation on behalf of the guys to push forward and keep improving, which is obviously crucial," he said.

When asked what has his team done in the last few days to avoid a repeat of such a performance, Strauss said: "One of the things that you always do after losing is try and step back and just try and look at things. There are some areas where we need to work on a little bit. We've changed our net sessions a little bit allowing people to do what individually they feel to work on. We're not talking about massive changes or technique or anything like that, it's always important against spin because in some ways it is important you are pro-active rather than reacting to the ball that comes down. You need to know what your game is in order to do that."

Thoroughly analysed

Strauss has also thoroughly analysed the reasons behind his team's defeats and candidly admitted that some of his players are out of form. "We had very good reason to think we could win out here. Our bowlers had done really well. We got ourselves into a situation when we were chasing 140 to win the second Test we should have done that. We haven't scored enough runs and the reasons for that are wide and varied I suppose, to a certain extent cricket is a bit of a form game and probably few of our guys have got out of form in conjunction with each other which doesn't help."

Strauss also feels that inability to adapt to conditions early is another reason. "I still think we kind of paid the price in the second Test for our sort of failure to adapt to the conditions on day one of the Test series where there wasn't much in it for the spinners."

Strauss concluded by giving a strong message: "You can't keep on underperforming forever so all of us have a responsibility on our shoulders to improve our game. I am always a strong believer that no one has a guaranteed place in this England side and actually the environment only works properly when you have pressure on you for your place in the side. So we all will be working hard in the next five days."