England players have become risk-takers: Strauss

England skipper Andrew Strauss has said that his team's transformation into a winning combination is due to the players becoming fearless risk-takers when competing with the best teams in the world.

And Strauss himself has shown the way by changing from a classical opening batsman to a biff-bang dazzler at the top of the order.

England will become only the second team after Australia (who have done it twice) to win a one-day series in South Africa if they avoid defeat in the fifth one-dayer here today.

It is a huge contrast from their crushing 6-1 loss at home to Australia last summer in the aftermath of The Ashes triumph.

Strauss, 32, insisted: "I think we've progressed a long way since we lost that series to Australia.

"Sometimes, you need to go through those tough times to see the light and realise where you are going wrong.  We realised we weren't as good as we wanted and had to do things differently. It gave us the impetus to mix things up and to force myself and Andy Flower to change things," The Sun quoted him, as saying.

"We want players to play with aggression, express themselves and think on their feet," he added.