South African fans across the country experienced a mixed bag of emotions as the Proteas lost for the first time in their World Cup campaign as England clinched a six wicket victory.

Those who got up to catch the start of the action at 6am were treated to a superb spell of bowling by Robin Peterson as Andrew Struass, Kevin Pietersen and Ian bell all fell cheaply and England were in a spot of bother at 15 for three.

If you’re not keen on joining the adulation of the English cricket team steer clear of British media for the next week. Paul Collingwood’s men have become the darlings of the nation, saviours of English cricket, restorers of national sporting pride, etc, etc.

After an impressive team performance against New Zealand, South Africa were given a true lesson today as they were convincingly beaten by a resurgent England team by 39 runs inside 19 overs.

England enter the ICC World Twenty20 on the back of very little competitive T20 cricket.

    The last time they were involved in T20 competition, in February, they drew a two-match series with Pakistan 1-1.

    Last November they also shared a series 1-1, this time against hosts South Africa.

    The squad that has been chosen for the World Twenty20 has undergone a touch of alteration since the South African series.

    The South African born duo of batsman Michael Lumb and wicketkeeper-batsman Craig Kieswetter have been included as has 24-year-old all-rounder Ajmal Shahzad.

To lose a home series is massively disappointing but I honestly still have reason to feel quite excited about the challenges that lie ahead for this one-day team and our potential to once again become the number ranked team in the world.

The loss in Port Elizabeth hurt the whole team and we need to get that game out of our systems by Friday. We have to turn things around as quickly as possible.

The amount of cricket we play these days you have to get over losses quickly and we have shown in the past that we can do that and I think we should be able to do it again this week.

We probably haven’t done as well as we wanted to on the previous weekends in the series. We have been good on the Fridays but not so good on the Sundays so hopefully this is another good Friday for us.