Which seems to be a polite way of telling us that the next 48 hours should be the most demanding of a long season as they first meet Pakistan and then Sri Lanka.
Should, of course, is the operative word as Hansie Cronje needs one more victory to neatly sew up place in this season's Standard Bank Triangular tournament final at Newlands barely a week away.
And naturally it is no coincidence that the two teams they are playing are the 1992 and 1996 title-holders. The sub-continent limited-overs wonders just happened to be passing through and on their way to yet another slogs venue.
More seriously, though, tne first of this intriguing double header involving South Africa and their visitors is at SuperSport Centurion tomorrow where the possibility of Allan Donald playing his 100th one-day international looms against Pakistan. After yesterday's defeat here at Willowmoore Park, Rashid Latif's tourists are just as desperate to win their final pool match to keep their hopes alive of playing in the final.
Joining this group of desperados are the Sri Lankans: they too are desperate to make it to Cape Town.
For South Africa, however, enters another equation. The tour of England starts next month and contains six possible ODIs. The first three of these are the Texaco Trophy series against England only a month away. Once the serious side of the tour is out of the way: the Test series and county matches, the next series of slogs take over.
And as Sri Lanka are involved in that lot as well, the South Africans will no doubt be tired of sipping tea.
All this of course, is to do with longer-term visionary plans of Peter Pollock's selection panel: this is the World Cup and takes place next year in England, during May and June. Hansie Cronje, the South African captain, along with Bob Woolmer, have been handed what amounts to the squad taking part in that five-week bash in the curerent ODI circus in South Africa.
For both sets of ODI games in England this year, as part of the experiment, changes to the squad's playing complement is possible. Mike Rindel may not make the 17 for the UK tour but as he happens to be playing league in some northern part of the country, he might be pulled in for the ond-dayers as part of the World Cup strategy.
It is one of the reasons for the rotation system in use in this series. Rindel and Steve Elworthy are likely to play their home turf but being rested at Springbok Park against the Sri Lankans on Sunday. And just to make it more enticing for local fans, Donald will make his debut in this particular series in Bloemfontein.
Perhaps a nice commercial touch, but it is also playing with the rotation system, especially with the team for England being announced after the Newlands final. Pollock has admitted the selectors need to get a good look at all the candidates, especially those for the limited-overs games.
Cronje would not enjoy the prospect of losing both matches this weekend and then going into the final on a superior run rate.
``We need to work hard and be more disciplined in our game,'' he said in Port Elizabeth on Monday after Sri Lanka earned the first of what have been two shock victories.
And Pakistan, apart from looking too powerful for Sri Lanka last week, first in Kimberley and then Paarl, have rarely pushed South Africa in either of their two games. They have batted indifferently and their bowling, once Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis was see off, the bowling has lacked punch and penetration.
In fact the way Waqar bowled yesterday must be cause for concern in the Pakistan camp: he went for 86 in his 10 overs and mainly because he bowled too short on a ground (Willowmoore Park) where the boundaries square of the pitch are on the short side.
An interesting two matches which could still produce a surprise result the way Sri Lankans are playing at present.