We are confident of beating England

The defeat against Zimbabwe has been a hard one to swallow, but we need to get past it as soon as we can.

As I had said in my post-match conference, we did not show enough respect to the game, and we need to understand that while the spectators have seen this as a "hit and giggle" fest, we cannot as players feel the same way. There was no disrespect to the Zimbabwe team, but we need to take a long, hard look at the way we are approaching this format.

The game was lost as soon as we lost three wickets with very little on the scoreboard.

The fact that the conditions were very different from the ones in Johannesburg did not help, but it would be wrong on our part to use that or the wet conditions as an excuse.

The Zimbabweans fielded admirably in similar conditions, and their bowling too was well planned.

Chasing at Newlands is always tricky and Brendon Taylor was truly exceptional during the chase. We have only our own poor performance to blame for yesterday, and it's up to us to put in a good show today.

I know that quite a few commentators, particularly from Australia, have alleged that we were complacent about playing Zimbabwe, and had thought that we just needed to turn up in order to do well.

Best shot

That's not true and they would know from our record that we are always giving a game our best shot, no matter who the opposition is.

We had a bad day and we must ensure we don't have another one for the rest of this tournament. The England team is full of players who are very well acquainted with the Twenty20 format.

They are the pioneers of this avatar of cricket, and were playing tough intense cricket against the Indians till just last week.

This means that they are completely in their stride and have a distinct head start against us.

However, I am confident that if we stick to our plans and execute them well, we can still win this all-important encounter.

We need to knuckle down and improve on our bowling areas, but the key would still be the way our batsmen perform.

We have been poor starters in limited overs tournaments - for instance, we lost our opening game of the Champions Trophy to the West Indies last year - so our recent history does give us some solace.

It's been a roller-coaster fortnight personally, from the lows at home to the highs at the ICC Awards to the shock of the Zimbabwe defeat. But yesterday's blip notwithstanding, I would take this opportunity to congratulate Matthew Hayden and the rest of the guys for making the last 12 months so memorable.

Part of our success was attributable to the fact that we focussed on playing well when it mattered. Hopefully the trophies that we won that night, and that are with us right now, will inspire us to do well tomorrow.

They would know from our record that we are always giving a game our best shot, no matter who the opposition is.