England captain Michael Vaughan pledged that his team would seek to carry over their triumphant form of 2004 into the new year after they came within two wickets of a ninth successive victory on a dramatic fifth day of the second Test against South Africa at Kingsmead Thursday.

Bad light came to South Africa's rescue with 15 overs still due to be bowled but Vaughan said it had been a great effort by his team to

get so close to victory after being bundled out for 139 on the first day and trailing by 193 on the first innings.

"The way our team have come back to have South Africa on the rack was a fantastic effort," said Vaughan.

"The clouds came in at the end and there was nothing we could do about that but we're delighted still to be 1-0 up in the series."

England finished the year unbeaten in 13 Tests, winning 11 matches and drawing two.

"Our aim is to have as good a year in 2005 as we did in 2004," said Vaughan, looking ahead to the

third Test of the five-match series, starting in Cape Town on January 2.

"I'd prefer to be in my shoes than in (South African captain) Graeme Smith's. We're going to go to Cape Town to play as well as we did the last three days."

Smith acknowledged that South Africa were lucky to escape with a draw.

"We were on top of this Test match after two and a half days but we didn't finish it off and they came back and played superbly. We had to fight from there on," said Smith.

South Africa, set an unlikely FROM PAGE 13

target of 378 to win, were 290 for eight when gathering storm clouds persuaded umpires Darrell Hair and Simon Taufel to offer South African batsmen AB de Villiers and Makhaya Ntini the chance to go off the field.

"The way AB and Polly (Pollock) gutsed it out set a standard that all the batters and bowlers need to look at," admitted Smith.

The skipper added the South African batsmen needed to be more ruthless.

"We are getting too many 60 or 70 run partnerships. We've got to get those up over 100 -- that's when games start to change," he said.