ENGLAND are determined to finish what they started in South Africa and will be happy with nothing less than a series victory after the Wanderers Test.

Matt Prior warned there will be no hint of a ‘‘comfort zone’’ for Andrew Strauss’ tourists, as they acclimatise to altitude again after three weeks at sea level in preparation for Thursday’s final match of four.

That adjustment is a crucial one to the wicketkeeper-batsman, who must retune his lung capacity and reactions to the rarefied atmosphere.

All his efforts will be to one end, though – to make sure England convert their hardfought 1-0 lead into a winning margin over hosts who were ranked number one in the world until shortly before the series began.

Prior was not referring to the Highveld conditions when he said: ‘‘This is nowhere near a comfort zone.

‘‘We didn’t come here to draw a series; we came here to win one.’’ That much has been made clear publicly and privately by England since, for the second time in three Tests, they held on last week in Cape Town with nine wickets down to deny South Africa victory.

‘‘The coach had a long chat with us this morning and was pretty adamant on that,’’ Prior added ‘‘We don’t want to be the nearly men. We want to be guys that go back saying, ‘we’ve had a fantastic winter - we won the one-dayers and we’ve won the Test series’, not, ‘we nearly won the Test series’.

‘‘Watching the guys train, everyone has taken that on board.

‘‘This team is going out to win this Test match, not to hang on to a draw or try to scrape through.

‘‘If we can go back 2-0, that would be a dream come true for all of us.’’ South African coach Mickey Arthur admits they will have to ‘‘gamble a little’’ to try to salvage a drawn series.

He has made no secret of the fact a result pitch will be prepared at The Wanderers, to give South Africa a chance of the win they need to square the score at 1-1.

‘‘We’ve got to win it,’’ said Arthur. ‘‘We don’t have an option, so gamble a little is probably the right way to put it.’’ The gambling seems sure to manifest itself first of all in the nature of the surface – grass and pace likely to be in evidence – with team selection to suit, too.

‘‘We might gamble a little on the wicket – we’ll just see what the weather brings,’’ Arthur added.

‘‘I always say you can take grass off but you can’t put it back on.

‘‘If you are looking for a result, it is a gamble you may have to take.’’ Even so, Arthur is not anticipating a surface that makes batting a lottery and loads the dice too heavily in the bowlers’ favour.

‘‘You look for a grassy wicket but it won’t be a major ’green mamba’ out there,’’ he continued.

‘‘It will allow the batters to get stuck in.’’ Arthur has a tough assignment, meanwhile, making sure his team recover from the ‘‘deflating’’ experience of having to settle for a stalemate in Cape Town last week when, for the second time in three matches, England finished the final day with nine wickets down.

Andrew Strauss’ team appear to have become masters of the survival technique, having pulled off the same trick in the first Test of last summer’s Ashes at Cardiff on the way to a series victory.

‘‘I’d be lying if I said our dressing room wasn’t a very disappointed place after Cape Town,’’ Arthur conceded.

‘‘That’s justifiably so but the positives we took far outweigh the negatives.

‘‘I know the boys are smarting and will want to get a result.’’ That said, he accepts two near misses – separated by the landslide England victory in Durban that has put the tourists in an unbeatable position – is an awkward scenario, psychologically.

‘‘It almost felt in our changing room – it certainly did at Newlands and Centurion – as if England had won.”

In England’s last two rearguards, number 11 Graham Onions has been the man South Africa could not shift.

The hosts were understandably frustrated as Onions kept out Makhaya Ntini’s final over at Centurion, then Morne Morkel’s at Newlands.

But their coach can only admire the Durham tail-ender.

‘‘Hats off to Onions - is he man of the series?’’ Arthur asked, with a smile.

‘‘He has thwarted us, and who would have thought England could have done it (held on with nine down) three times in eight Tests?”