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Cape Town - South Africa's batsmen have all spent time in the middle in the Proteas' two warm-up matches ahead of the first Test against Australia in Perth on Thursday.
Dean Elgar, Faf du Plessis, JP Duminy, Hashim Amla, Rilee Rossouw and Quinton de Kock all made runs at some point during the warm-ups against a Cricket Australia XI and a South Australia XI while Temba Bavuma scored a 40-odd against the latter.
But one member of the Proteas top order who has struggled is opening batsman Stephen Cook.
Cook, 33, failed in all three of his innings in the warm-ups, carding scores of 5, 12 and 0.
But, having succeeded at Test level in just the three matches he has played so far, Cook is not reading too much into those scores.
"I haven't scored that many runs since I've been here. I'm not too perturbed by that," he said on Tuesday.
"I had a couple of decent domestic scores back home and I've felt like I've been in decent touch.
"It's about hitting the ground running when you get to the real stuff. It's a fresh slate for me and I'll be up for it come Thursday."
Cook and Dean Elgar will have the challenge of facing Mitchell Starc with the new ball, but Cook is not overly daunted by that prospect either.
"I'm very cautious to every single out one guy," he said.
"It's a team game and on any given day one of their bowlers could knock us over."
On the wicket, which is historically bouncy and quick, Cook said he would draw on his experiences back home.
"The Perth wicket comes with a great reputation. We've spoken to guys like Hashim," Cook said.
"My home ground is the Wanderers back home and that's probably the one ground around the world that's similar. I'll take a few of those lessons into the match.
"They're (Australia) a world class bowling unit. They're going to challenge us in different ways ... they've got a lot of variation.
"We're going to have all of our bases covered. We'll be challenged but we're up for it."
Play on Thursday gets underway at 04:30.
