By Henry Olonga Former Zimbabwe cricketer

I would imagine South Africa will be favourites for the NatWest Series.

Graeme Smith has already started his war of words with England and the press. He's said some pretty aggressive things, how he will play to the limits of the law.

South Africa are coming here to play hard and it seems the fact he's got a lot of experience around him will certainly help.

It's much easier to captain a team that has three or four captains in it. Shaun Pollock has already done it, Boucher has done it at times, and then there's Jacques Kallis in the side too.

Graeme Smith in action at Wormsley on Monday

Smith will just have to be the strong leader I think he is.

I played against him when he was captain of the A-side but he should also be open to suggestions from the other players.

Zimbabwe will not exactly be oozing with confidence.

They lost to Ireland, they lost to Hampshire, and the game they won against Somerset was a nail-biter.

The main challenge for them will be to deal with the fact that they've lost Stuart Carlisle and he would have been a key part of the middle order.

If they gel they certainly can compete but the one thing they must contend with is the swing. It makes batting difficult and it might mean the bowlers give away too many wides.

If we can keep the extras down, get a competitive score on the board and bowl with discipline we are definitely going to win a couple of games. We got to the final in Sharjah. Pakistan were there, and so were Sri Lanka.

Mark Vermeulen has been sent home from the team. He's a confident character but failed to score any runs in the big matches.

News from the Zimbabwe camp: Vermeulen sent home

The guy was struggling and was sent home for ill-discipline, but people are less sympathetic if you are doing badly as a player.

Zimbabwe have had a lot of that in the past and I don't know what it will do for morale but I am pretty sure the loss of Carlisle will affect them more.

For England, Marcus Trescothick has hit a nice purple patch of form. England had a few flutters but won the two games that mattered. They were low-scoring affairs but England have the strength in bowling.

Trescothick has just shown that it takes one match to find form again. Vaughan hasn't set the world alight yet but he only needs one innings before he's back in form and the same goes for all the other England players.

They are all just one knock away from the big one. It's not just Trescothick that's the big wicket - every wicket counts.