It's a very exciting time building up to Lord's. I'm sure it's going to be a great, competitive series with big crowds and plenty of entertainment. It's going to be a good test for all of us with the huge media and public interest.

Personally I'm happy to have passed all my fitness tests and that I've been able to play my first innings in a match for almost two months, since injuring my hamstring in India. It was good mentally and in terms of my body to spend some time at the crease, in the match against Middlesex. You can do all the rehab in the world but until you get out there you don't really know how you are going to be.

Hashim Amla scored another big century for the second game running and is looking solid and in great shape. He is a guy who English crowds won't have seen too much of. He is a quiet and disciplined person in many ways but a guy who also has a great sense of humour.

He came into our team a couple of years ago and had some technical problems at first but he went away and came back a much better and tighter player, scoring a hundred against New Zealand on a difficult pitch, which got him going, and he has not looked back since. He knows this England tour is going to be another challenge for him, especially to his technique at number three, but if he continues to play as he has, he will fine.

Morne Morkel is another who will be quite new in England and he is very much an up-and-coming player with huge potential. He's got pace and height and the ability to bowl really awkward deliveries. His average speed is about 90 miles per hour and he can be quicker. He is still young but if he can prepare well, spectators in England are going to see his potential as they will with Dale [Steyn], and they know already what Makhaya [Ntini] can do.

I have spoken about our interest in what England will do in terms of Freddie Flintoff and now we know. It's always difficult for opposition teams to comment on selection but I'm sure he will be back very soon.
Their players in that first Test will be under pressure knowing he is on his way back.

Fred is a big cog in the England set-up and you want to play your big-game players - that is something I have learned over the years. I guess for them they wanted to be conservative and make sure he was ready for a Test match. The guys in the team will know that if they don't play up to a reasonable standard they will be vulnerable.

The series is bound to be pretty competitive and tense like any match between England and South Africa, England-Australia or South Africa-Australia.

They can be quite up and down in terms of emotions and that is one thing we have spoken a lot about as a team, not to look too far ahead at the big picture and just to play the moment.

It is easy to get distracted from that when there is a lot of hype and outside interest but we cannot allow it to affect us.

We drew our last series here after being 2-1 up but it's hard to regret anything given where we were at then. It was my first big series as captain at the age of 22 and nobody expected us to perform as well as we did.

We should have played more clinical cricket in that fifth Test at The Oval when we were on top (after scoring almost 500 in the first innings). But Marcus Trescothick and Graham Thorpe played great knocks and scored quickly. We almost scored too quickly beforehand as it left so much time in the game for things to happen. It was disappointing not to win that series but that experience makes us hungrier on this tour.

If there is one thing we can learn from then, it is to keep ourselves as fresh as possible. That match was at the end of a three-month tour, as the one-dayers were up first, but that isn't the case this time.

Some people suggested we choked but I don't think we choked. We realise that is a tag we have to deal with after the word was bandied about by Steve Waugh after the 1999 World Cup. That will probably always be the case until we win a big tournament like the World Cup, a Champions Trophy, the Twenty20 World Cup or a big Test series. To us the word is something we need to just laugh at.

This team understands each other more than back then, when we were finding our feet under a new captain. We all have so much respect for each other's ability to produce the goods under pressure. It should be great.

This diary was syndicated to The Sunday Telegraph