A definitive sense of worry lined Andrew Strauss' sentiments on Thursday, with the England captain expressing his side's "desperate" need to avoid a series whitewash.

Triumphant by 10 wickets in the series opener in Dubai and 72 runs in the second Test in Abu Dhabi, Pakistan sport an unassailable two-nil lead in the three-match series, with the final game set to get underway on Friday.

"It's a setback, being two-nil down, in the sense that we didn't want it to happen," said Strauss. "We didn't want to lose a series. But that's gone, finished - and in some ways, maybe it's a good lesson for us that if you're five percent off your game against the majority of sides you're going to come unstuck.

"We desperately want to avoid losing the series three-nil. We desperately want to come back and show we're better than we have shown so far in the series. I think there's a feeling among the whole squad that we can and should come back and do that."

Pakistan's success has largely been built on the collective performance of their spinners. Saeed Ajmal, Abdur Rehman and Mohammad Hafeez have snared 34 of the 40 English wickets to fall. Ajmal, with his doosra variation, and Rehman, for his left-arm dynamic, have proved particularly impressive with 17 and 12 victims respectively.

England's batsmen, meanwhile, have been near clueless. Not one of Andrew Strauss, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Eoin Morgan have averaged more than 17 in the UAE, with Pietersen the worst of the lot after scoring just 17 runs from his four knocks.

"That's one of the crucial things about playing spin, you have to adapt your game according to the surfaces you play on," added Strauss. "I am very optimistic you'll see people a bit clearer in what their gameplan is and how they want to play, which is a good starting point.

"These conditions are slightly different, so it's more about adapting your game to the conditions than going right back to square one and saying 'right, I need to change everything'. That's a dangerous route to go down.

England are likely to name an unchanged XI despite the inadequacies of Bell, Pietersen and Morgan, with Ravi Bopara again set to miss out.