MICHAELl Vaughan has shrugged off England's FOURTEEN successive one day defeats against Australia.

Vaughan will lead England against Australia for the first time when the ICC Champions Trophy hosts take on the world champions in tomorrow's Edgbaston semi final.

And he is adamant that the Aussies' recent record against England means nothing.

He said: "That's all in the past. A lot of the guys who will be playing tomorrow have never played Australia and we can't control previous games.

"We respect them a huge amount, they've taken the game to a different level and it's up to other teams to catch up.

"The Aussies are undoubtedly the best team in the world and have beaten a very good New Zealand side.

"We're going to Birmingham excited with the challenge and looking forward to testing our abilities against the best.

"They'll be favourites, but we'll go there to enjoy ourselves and try and play positive cricket the way we have over the past few weeks."

Sri Lanka skipper Marvan Atapattu insisted that he was confident of a win when rain stopped play with 156 runs still needed from the last 26 overs, and with five wickets in hand.

"We bat all the way down to number 11," he explained.

But Vaughan added: "It's not nice when the wether intervenes but we felt that we were controlling the game and to get 250 on that kind of wicket was tremendous, especially today with only 18 overs left.

"We'd done a little bit of homework on the Rose Bowl and the wicket and we always felt that between 210 and 220 was going to be a competitive total, especially with our bowling attack - but to score 250 was 30 more than we expected."