Where the series will be decided
England’s openers
Opening in one-day cricket might be the best job in the sport these days with negligible swing from the white ball on good, batter-friendly, pitches. The faster they come, the harder they go is Jason Roy’s philosophy and he put it into practice during England’s World Cup campaign. Which is perhaps why he is now the next man in for the most difficult job in the sport: opening in Test cricket.
When Alastair Cook, astutely perhaps, decided to retire last year when openers’ averages across the world were down on previous seasons, it created a void. Rory Burns is still early in his international career and Roy, before this summer, was yet to even start it, so England’s openers will be in Australia’s line of sight.
The battle of the best bowlers
Both sides have some of the best quicks in the world. With a red ball, in English conditions, James Anderson and Stuart Broad are unrivalled. But in Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, Australia have express pace, with the ability to swing the ball both ways. The Ashes are unfolding later in the English season than usual, so swing-friendly conditions may be hard to come by and the Australian contingent could prosper.
However, these fast bowlers might all be good, but all are prone to injury. Anderson is returning to fitness from a calf muscle tear and Hazlewood’s shoulder rehabilitation kept him out of the World Cup. Forget he who dares, it is he who wears, not tears, who will win.
Australia’s middle order
In a throwback to the heady days of Australian dominance in the 1990s, Steve Waugh is back in green and gold (a batting mentor, we are told) and Australia have taken on Australia A in an Australia’s Got Talent (the cricket round) to warm-up for the Ashes. It is from this melee that the tourists’ selectors hope to pluck the best to bolster their middle order.
Steve Smith returns, Usman Khawaja caresses and Travis Head provides some young authority, but beyond that it is all to play for. Some scored runs against Sri Lanka, others against India over the winter and a few are now dominating the County Championship. Form suggests an embarrassment of riches, but whether that will translate into the Test arena, only time will tell.
The London Ashes
It is a quirky statistic but one which holds; Australians like London. We are not talking about those who cluster around Earl’s Court, but the venerable old venues of Lord’s and the Oval. Since the Second World War, Australia have lost just one in every five London Tests. Year-on-year they have a habit of winning, or at the very least drawing, there and have done so on nine of the past 11 occasions, since the turn of the century.
It might be the flatter decks, or maybe the sense of occasion and the opportunity to do over England in the most English of English backyards. Whatever the reason, two wins in London, as they did in 2015, Ben Stokes out for a duck at Lord’s as England were bowled out for 103, and the Ashes will be difficult to wrestle back.
Hangover versus momentum
James Anderson, a spectator at the white-ball finale, believes that England’s World Cup win will allow “English cricketers to try and carry that momentum on” into the Ashes. Ian Bell, a veteran of many past campaigns, has said that Edgbaston, where the series opens, is a ground where Australians tend “to cop it a little bit more in terms of taunts from the boundary”. With a World Cup in the locker and the boos greeting Smith and Warner unlikely to die down, a cauldron of hostility will make for thrilling viewing. Will it lift England? Or might they wilt under the pressure and expectation, something which was swatted away under Eoin Morgan’s captaincy but is less assured in the red-ball format. The Ireland Test definitely felt more like a hearty hangover.