England is not out of form: Shoaib Akhtar

LONDON: Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar doesn't believe England's one-day team is out of form despite it not winning a match against a major rival in its last nine attempts.

Pakistan leads 1-0 and England must win Tuesday's third game at the Rose Bowl in Southampton to have any chance of winning the five-match series.

"In the one-day game you seem to get runs one day, and then the next day you can't get runs at all; so you can't really say they are in bad form," Akhtar said.

"We are exploiting their weakness right now, but at the same time we are cautious. We know they are very, very good players and they definitely can come back at us really hard."

Akhtar steered Pakistan to a seven-wicket win against England in the second match at Lord's on Saturday, taking four wickets to move to 206 one-day international dismissals.

Akhtar and new-ball partner Mohammad Asif have taken 12 wickets in the first two matches, with England batsmen Kevin Pietersen, Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Strauss combining for just 43 runs.

"We bear in mind that they are a very good team and very capable of coming back really hard at us and I think they have very good players," Akhtar added. "But we are going to keep on doing our things and keep working on our plans and we are just going to keep our heads focused."

England will be without veteran fast bowler Darren Gough, who was ruled out of the rest of the series because of a shin injury. Durham's Graham Onions will take his place.

"It is a great opportunity," Onions said. "I can bowl with pace and, hopefully, I will be able to swing it and seam it. I am just going to try my best and fingers crossed everything will go well for me."

England captain Strauss remains confident the team can still win the series.

"If we go out there in a positive frame of mind, we hope we can turn a few things around," he said. "The important thing from our point of view is to get in a winning position that's when we can start to press it home. But in the first couple of games we haven't really got into those positions."

The rain-abandoned first match at Sophia Gardens in Wales was preceded by a Twenty20 defeat to Pakistan. England was also beaten 5-0 by Sri Lanka earlier in the season in the 50-over format, and lost the final game of a 5-1 series defeat to India in April.

The two other matches are at Nottingham on Friday and Birmingham on Sunday.