Graeme Swann eager to avoid Oval hiccup as England target clean sweep

England know for sure they must get by for good without Andrew Flintoff - but they have done pretty well without the all-rounder so far. The challenge they face against Pakistan at The Oval today is to continue that successful trend and fulfil their aim of winning every series they have contested this season.

Andrew Strauss' team are 2-0 up with three to play in the NatWest Series, following wins at Chester-le-Street and Headingley against opponents who have been beset throughout the limited-overs leg of their tour by the spot-fixing controversy.

Yet England fared poorly on their most recent one-day international foray into the capital - losing at both The Oval and Lord's in a mid-summer series against Australia which they had already settled with three opening victories elsewhere.

Graeme Swann is determined there will be no hiccup this time. "It's a game we need to win to wrap up the series," said the off-spinner. "It's been a long summer, and it would be nice if we could go out having won every series we've played. That was the aim at the start of it, and I think we've got ourselves in a very good position to do it."

Swann believes Pakistan have shown enough in their two defeats in the north to demonstrate they represent increasingly tougher opposition than they did in two Twenty20s in Cardiff - played when the corruption crisis was at its height.

He acknowledges, too, that England didn't help themselves, in the field at least, last weekend. "Pakistan have shown a hell of a lot of fight in the last two games - especially in the last one, where we aided them somewhat with our schoolboy fielding display," said Swann. "But to have to chase 290 was a good test of where we are as a one-day team."

He does not believe a punishing schedule was to blame for England's Leeds fumbles. "My own personal view is that it's not great travelling from Cardiff to Durham to Headingley.

"You do start to feel fatigue when you're doing that much travelling and playing back-to-back games. But that's just my excuse, not the team's. A lot of them are a lot fitter than me. They were feeling as fresh as daisies but just fielded like morons."