Well the tour gets under way on Friday with the first warm up match in Western Australia followed by fixture against South Australia and finally Australia A team. 3 good fixtures as warm ups before the big kick off in Brisbane on November 25th.

Speaking of Brisbane, the shield game at the Gabba the other day only lasted 2 days with some pace bowler picking up match figures of 11 for 52 on a nice green wicket!!! Another wicket in 3 weeks time please Mr Groundsman should suit England's attack nicely......

I'm gonna stick my neck out and say we are gonna retain the Ashes!
Not sure whether we're good enough to win the series outright or will scrape a draw though

Never have a better chance as our bowling attack is a lot better than the Aussies....only concern is the batting...we need KP to fire and then i think he will drag the other batsmen along with him.

Makes laugh all the concern about KP when Cook is looking dodgey and Collingwood and to a extent Trott as well.

I'd venture that the Aussies batting is worse than ours.

England 3 Australia 1 for me.

OUCH, that must have hurt!

Aus had SL 107-9 chasing 240 to win and then SL produced a record 10th wicket partnership to knock off the runs

Makes you almost feel sorry for them.

There's far too much optimism around concerning the Ashes.

Australia getting turned over by Sri Lanka in the T20s/ODIs is the last thing England would want to see.

It is the weakest Aussie side I can remember since the late 80s.
I can understand tempering the optimism somewhat but we have to go out there and play with no fear, they are so far away from being the dominant force of recent years it's untrue.

and now they're talking about dropping Watson down the order to replace Marcus North - I assume then Phil Hughes steps in.

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me - Watson has been very consistent at the top of the order.

Your glass is always half empty obviously, whereas mine is half full

Jonathan Trott is in the form of his life!!!






Only Sehwag and Tendulkar have scored more test match runs in 2010 and he averages 55 this year.

I think KP will screw his head on and knuckle down. I think he knows this is a massive series for his future role in the England team. Colly can also be relied upon to roll his sleeves up and muck in, he has done it so many times before to get England out of a hole.

Makes no sense, Watson gets them on the front foot with his aggressive style.

I fancy a drawn series or possibly the Aussies to take it 2-1.

Cool, look forward to Hughes having his technique against the short stuff severely examined again.

Callum Ferguson has been brought into their ODI squad and is slated to be next batsman in line for the Test squad. Decent player but is an Ashes series the time to be making a Test debut?? Good player though!

Eng have WA 213-6 this morning with Broad being the standout bowler.

WA 242-8 dec

Eng 10-1

Close.

Disappointing that Cook has gone cheaply.

The bowling performance was just about what England wanted. A decent number of overs for the 4 main bowlers. More value as a work out than if we'd dismissed them for 150 but better for morale than conceding 400.

i'm a huge fan of broad, i like his attitude (you need to get in your opponents faces - the aussies have done this for years), and he has the potential to become the worlds best cricketer. i think being in aus will suit his game and hopefully this could be the tour when he steps up to be the main man in the england team a'la botham and flintoff - just hope he has better luck with injury

Cook failing again.......if that was KP everybody would be up in arms...Looks as though "Malfoy" has hit the floor running....can see Broad doing some serious damage with ball and bat as the pitches will suit him and he has a habit of winding up the Aussies

Quite. I really hope Morgan gets a chance to stake a claim for a place.

Absolute balls...there's someone else in the England team who hasn't performed much recently and is getting off 100% scott-free...Alastair Cook has been lambasted for a supposed lack of form when in actual fact he's got 4 times as many centuries in the past 12 months as KP AND Captain Marvel have added together...

Test match averages these past 12 months
1 - Ian Bell 719 runs at 65.36 with 3 centuries
2 - Jonathan Trott 995 runs at 52.36 with 2 centuries
3 - Alastair Cook 855 runs at 42.75 with 4 centuries
4 - Paul Collingwood 611 runs at 40.73 with 1 century
5 - Matt Prior 570 runs at 38.00 with 1 century
6 - Kevin Pietersen 659 runs at 36.61 with 0 centuries
7 - Eoin Morgan 256 runs at 32.00 with 1 century
8 - Andrew Strauss 511 runs at 31.93 with 0 centuries

Even Michael Carberry has a better average than Strauss has these past 12 months. Amazing what being captain of a winning side covers up isn't it??

Yes because he's been a massive success so far hasn't he??

Off to the first test me.

This is England's problem, the batting line up is too weak and often needs propping up by the tail.

England win by 6 wickets.

Strauss unbeaten ton.

Cook out cheaply. Again.