Lehmann waiting on Clarke fitness

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Clarke is a doubt for the clash after experiencing pain in his left hamstring.

Should he fail to recover in time, vice-captain George Bailey will stand in as skipper, with Phil Hughes brought into the team to open alongside Aaron Finch.

With South Africa the other side involved in the triangular series, Australia will be keen to get Clarke back to full strength, but coach Lehmann was unable to shed any further light on his condition on Saturday.

"We'll have to wait and see," he told Cricket Australia's official website. "Obviously long flights don't help the old fella.

"But he's so professional in dealing with that sort of stuff, so it's a little setback for us but it gives someone else an opportunity if he doesn't come up."

Australia's last limited-overs match came at the Twenty20 World Cup in April, but Lehmann's men now face a busy period as they begin their preparations for the 50-over World Cup starting in February, to be hosted by themselves and New Zealand.

"It's the only break in our calendar for two years so it was good to have that break and we got to work on some things we wanted to work on, both individually and collectively as a team," Lehmann said.

"That's a good thing and now we've got to put them into practice in a game sense and hopefully over a period of time, over the next 12 months, we'll have a lot of success in these tournaments.

"So even though it's a break and they've had a bit of time off it's still a case of making sure we're getting to where we want to get to as a cricket team because I don't think we're there yet, and all the players and coaching staff realise that as well.

"We want to push as hard as we can to get that improvement quickly."

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