England’s one-day players will begin the serious business of the South Africa trip this afternoon after being given a clean slate by Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower.

The tour opens with a 50-over floodlit game against Diamond Eagles and a new concentration on power hitting and greater athleticism in the field as part of an attempt to reverse years of underachievement.

Flower, the team director, is keen for England to build on the best aspects of their passage to the semifinals of the Champions Trophy in September and is committed to giving extra priority to the one-day format.

The omission of Owais Shah from the squad only two games on from his brilliant 98 from 89 balls against South Africa in Centurion shows that fielding below the required standing will not be tolerated. Later in the game, Shah dropped a simple catch off Graeme Smith, who went on to score 141, albeit in defeat.

“Good fielding is part and parcel of the game nowadays and if you cannot do it, you have to be exceptional in other areas,” Paul Collingwood, England’s best fielder, said. “When you look around the field in practice now, you can see our guys faster across the ground. One-day cricket is about creating pressure in the field.”

The ECB appointed Richard Halsall as a full-time fielding coach in December 2007 and he has introduced some innovative drills in practice. Any overall improvement on the field, however, has been marginal.

Collingwood said: “I am not going to go into the reasons why Owais Shah was not selected. That is for the captain, the coach and selectors, but it is pretty much a clean slate from now on. They want to get the right personnel to make us a better one-day side, where we are more athletic in the field and also hit the ball harder.

“My own view is that we have played our best cricket when we take the game to the opposition, but you can have a hiccup playing like that. I don’t think it is just a case of ‘attack, attack, attack’. We have to make sure we attack at the right times and on the right pitches.”

Buoyed by their success against South Africa, England were guilty of trying to score too quickly, too soon in the subsequent games against New Zealand and Australia. Shah stood as culpable as anybody in attempting risky strokes after the loss of early wickets in conditions helping the bowlers.

The Eagles will provide stiff opposition for an England XI today. They have won all three of the domestic events over the past four seasons and knocked Sussex out of the Champions League on a Super Over eliminator last month. But they will be without Ryan McLaren, who is with the South Africa squad preparing for a one-day series against Zimbabwe.

England have beaten South Africa in the past five completed 50-over matches, including a 4-0 win in England in 2008, when South Africa were still in celebratory mood after clinching the Test series. “We can take confidence from our record,” Collingwood said. “I am sure they are wary of us.”

Smith may have something to say about that; in any case, Collingwood is certain that the South Africa captain will continue to try to niggle England with fresh criticism of the decision not to permit a runner when he complained of cramp during the Champions Trophy game, no matter that the call rested with the umpires rather than Strauss, the England captain.

The promotion of Jonathan Trott, who was born in Cape Town, into the squad gives Smith another potential source for a smart line or two, especially with Craig Kieswetter, a former South Africa Under-19 player, called into the England Performance Programme this week before he is qualified to play for his adopted country.

England are rallying around Trott, Flower and Strauss using almost the same words in defending his selection before departure last week. Collingwood, however, went farther than merely supporting the batsman, saying: “If other [English-born] players are worried, they just have to get better themselves. It sounds pretty ruthless, but you can only have 11 players in a team.”

Collingwood, who will captain England in the two Twenty20 internationals preceding the one-day series, is also confident that central contracts will be signed within the next month. The 2008-09 deals, which were not agreed until January this year because of wranglings over participation in the Indian Premier League, expired on September 30.

One-day squad

A J Strauss (Middlesex, captain), J M Anderson (Lancashire), T T Bresnan (Yorkshire), S C J Broad (Nottinghamshire), P D Collingwood (Durham), A N Cook (Essex), J L Denly (Kent), S I Mahmood (Lancashire), E J G Morgan (Middlesex), G Onions (Durham), K P Pietersen (Hampshire), M J Prior (Sussex), A U Rashid (Yorkshire), G P Swann (Nottinghamshire), I J L Trott (Warwickshire), L J Wright (Sussex).