The Ashes 2009 - England v Australia

8 July 2009

Preview By Tipster rdeacon (England)

Well, the ashes is with us once again.

It has been 4 long years since it was last held in this country and Vaughan, Flintoff and KP successfully held aloft that little urn.

Sadly 2 years ago we got totally anihilated over in convictland and as a nation, we are determined to wrestle it back from the baggy greens.

4 years ago we had a squad that was young fit and raring to go. Vaughan was at the peak of his powers with the bat as was an emerging south african in hte shape of Kevin Pietersen. Flintoff was on a roll and we had some great bowlers complete the lines up in the shape of Harmison, Jones, Giles and Hoggy.

Sadly none of the above bowlers are around this time as Jones is injured, Giles has retired and Hoggy is deemed not good enough to get into the sqaud. The same is said for Harmison even though he played in a "lions" squad against the aussies in a warm up last week and bowled very effectively.

Flintoff is back from injury (yet again) and could be anything, but I just hope and prey he lasts the series. KP is playing well as is Strauss and Bopara who are our main hopes of outscoring the aussies.

We have a decent keeper in the shape of Matt Prior who can actually score some runs, and then of course you have the very strange selection of Monty Panesar who has taken wickets this season at an average of over 70 !! When will we learn to pick players who are actually in form as opposed to players who have performed in the past but are out of form now !!??

Anyway, if it appears that I am painitng a rather negative picture of our squad then it is true. I don't really fancy us to muster too much of a challenge this time round, but the main overriding factor is, that i don't expect too much from the aussies either !

Gone are the stalwarts of Warne, Mcgrath, Hayden, Gilchrist and in have come largely undertried individuals with not a huge amount of experience of test cricket, let alone the cauldron that is ashes.

So you have 2 sides who are very equally matched but with potential match winners in their 11, both of which have something to proove.

The picth in Wales (first ever time an ashes test has ever been played there) is slow and flat which means just one thing, and that is runs, and lots of them.

I will be hoping for the toss to be won by England when we should bat first and hopefully rack up 5 or 600+, then try and skittle the convicts out twice. Obviously the aussies will do the same thing if they win the toss, but the message is clear. This is a batsmans picth, everyone wants to see runs, and the groundstaff will have prepared it in such a manner that the fielding side get very little out of it.

13/8 for the draw is a very fair price, and even if the weather holds up for 5 days I can see no other result.