Sam Burgess during England training© David Rogers/Getty Images

Sam Burgess is ready to answer England's call if he is handed his debut in the Rugby World Cup warm-ups but has played down any notion of it being a straight shootout between him and Bath team-mate Kyle Eastmond for the inside centre spot.

Since his cross-code switch from the Rabbitohs, Burgess seemed most at home in the back-row but England see him as an option at inside centre. England have three warm-up matches before their World Cup opener against Fiji on September 18 and Burgess is happy to make his Test debut in the backs.

"The way I look at it is I am under Stuart and it is his call," Burgess said. "Wherever he wants to play me I will give it my best shot and try and earn my team mates respect and feel comfortable with where I am playing.

"I just get on with the job. There is a lot of talk about it but from end I just keep it simple, I still train as hard as I can and work on my game, different skills and just do that. Try and keep it simple as possible."

With England likely to name four centres in their 31-man squad for the World Cup, Jonathan Joseph and Brad Barritt are favourites to nail down two of the spots leaving Burgess, Eastmond, Luther Burrell, Billy Twelvetrees and potentially Henry Slade to battle for the other two. Though Eastmond and Burgess both have rugby league backgrounds, he does not want the battle to make the squad to be seen as a case of the pair going head-to-head.

"Obviously me and Kyle are in the same position as is every other centre in the squad so I would hate for it to be played out as me versus Kyle," Burgess said. "That's not the case. In terms of the getting over someone, it is not about that.

"As much as you want to do well, this game is not an individual sport. It is a team sport. We demonstrate that on a daily basis here and want to carry it forward throughout the World Cup. So regardless I am his teammate and that's how I will approach every day with every single one of the players in the squad. I would hope it would be the other way around."

Stuart Lancaster is expected to cut between eight and nine players on Friday as the squad decreases in the run up to their Test against France on August 15 but the prospect of the squad being slimmed is not playing on Burgess' mind.

"I am quite relaxed in terms of it being so close. My approach at the moment, I guess there are cuts coming soon, so I am just enjoying improving on a daily basis. When the games come, the games come. If I am still around, I am still around. For now, I just try to better myself daily because as I said you never know when your journey is going to finish. You never know when it's going to end. I am quite relaxed.

"We have got a good team vibe going on, there's good fun. We enjoy our time away together both on and off the field. When it comes round, it comes round and we are all ready for that."