Sturridge: We'd never cheat

Cape Town - Daniel Sturridge insists neither he nor his England team-mates would ever cheat to manipulate the outcome of a football match as they gear up for Thursday's crunch Group D encounter against Uruguay.

The 2014 World Cup has seen more than a few incidents of 'simulation', where players have either overreacted to challenges or gone down under no contact at all in a bid to dupe the referee into awarding fouls, free-kicks and even penalties.

However, various forms of cheating in the game are by no means limited to this year's Brazil spectacular, with Uruguay striker Luis Suarez's intentional handball in the 2010 quarter-final against Ghana to prevent a goal still fresh in the memory.

But Sturridge, Suarez's Liverpool team-mate, insists he would never stoop to such tactics, claiming he and the England national team prefer to "play by the book".

Speaking ahead of this week's clash, where England and Uruguay both go in search of a first point at this year's World Cup, Sturridge said: "I'm going to do anything in my power to win this game, provided it's within the rules of the game.

"But I'm not going to dive and I'm not going to handball a goal-bound shot because it's not in my nature.

"We're an honest country and go about our business in an honest way. No disrespect to other countries. But we play the game within the laws. We don't bend the rules. We play by the book.

"There's nothing wrong with that. We've gone a long way doing that, from 1966 when we won the World Cup, playing within the laws.

"That's how I was brought up. We don't like to cheat to win. We want to play in an honest way."