Ashes Buzz

Geoff Boycott has been sounding off about Duncan Fletcher, advising him to quit. Boycott has half a good point.

His suggestion that Fletcher has reached the end of his shelf life as Test coach is just bizarre. His best spell came very recently, between February 2004 and September 2005. In the last Ashes series, he led England into the promised land. Since then, they have stuttered, but have still had two series results that were improvements on the previous meetings, drawing in India and beating Pakistan. In seven years under Fletcher, they have gone from ninth in the rankings (a quirk of the old Wisden World Championship, but only slightly unflattering) to second.

Australia are firm favourites. England are clear underdogs. England will have to be at their best to win. Australia can probably win without being at their best. The Diwali meeting between the two sides in Jaipur is the Ashes in miniature. There should really be a special trophy for the occasion: a one-inch high urn, containing the remains of a tiny firecracker.

Here are eleven wishes for the game.

The Champions Trophy hasn’t had many runs, but it has had something more precious: upsets. South Africa fell to New Zealand, and now Australia have gone down to West Indies.

The Aussies showed two unexpected weaknesses. After a strong start with the ball, they couldn’t finish off the West Indian top order. The killer instinct was missing. Glenn McGrath, still shaking off the rust and trundling in as third seamer, was anodyne, and while other teams’ spinners have flourished, Australia’s gave Brian Lara and Runako Morton no headaches.

For England, the Champions Trophy has begun not with a bang but a whimper. In Jaipur today, the only fireworks came from the crowd. On that, there will be little disagreement. The question is, will this poor performance have ramifications? Will it make any difference in Brisbane on November 23?

There are two immediate consequences. The batsmen have little form or confidence to take into Saturday’s meeting with Australia. And England now have to win that match to stay in the tournament. Whether all the England players want to stay in it, deep down, is doubtful – if they drop out early, they get a precious few days at home before setting off for Australia. But you can be sure they don’t want to be humiliated, to be the next whipping boys for the marauding gangs known as Fleet Street sports editors. Which is what will happen if they crash to a second defeat.

So there’s more pressure on England. And less on Australia, who have already been favoured by the fixture list – they begin with a nice gentle game against West Indies, who are a cut below all the other teams apart from England. It becomes ever more bizarre that those two reached the final last time.

To win the Ashes you almost certainly need a strong opening pair. Most of the Ashes-winning pairings that comes to mind have been either two right-handers or a right and a left. Hobbs and Sutcliffe, Woodfull and Ponsford, Gooch and Robinson were all right-handers. Wessels and Dyson, Broad and Athey, Taylor and Slater were all right-and-left.

Since the final Ashes Test of 2001, Australia’s first-choice opening pair have been two left-handers, Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer. They have never been in danger of being mistaken for two peas in a pod. Hayden is huge and takes a big stride forward, Langer is little and mainly moves sideways, so bowlers have to change their length every time the two of them take a single, just as they would have to change their line for a right-and-left combination.

Dear old Glenn McGrath is at it again. “I reckon it will be 5-0,” he says of the forthcoming Ashes series. He said it last time too. Once bitten, twice … not shy at all.

Speaking at the Adelaide Oval, he also said, “This is where we’re going to win back the Ashes”. Someone gently informed him that Adelaide is the venue for the second Test, so that’s not actually possible. “Aw well, it will be 2-0,” McGrath replied, “and that’s as near as dammit.”

Brett Lee comes across as the most likeable man in the Australian dressing-room. He is a fast bowler with a smile where you might expect a snarl, he has a charmingly down-to-earth sideline as a shop assistant in men’s tailoring, and he has had the decency to turn down large sums to invade his own privacy by letting his wedding be photographed. So the thing he said today came as a surprise.

He confirmed that he would definitely play in the first Test against England rather than be with his wife Liz at the birth of their first child, due on the eve of the match. "We've said right from the start, which is credit to the person that Liz is, I will definitely be playing,” Lee said. "I'm hoping and praying that it either comes early or late. To me, cricket is important, but family is the most important thing in my life. Hopefully I can be there for both.”

Hopefully he can. But he is saying one thing here and planning to do another. If family is really the most important thing for him, then he should be at the birth. He has already played 54 Tests, including plenty against England; he is unlikely to have 54 children. The birth of his first child will be probably the biggest event of his life. And he lives in an age when top sportsmen are no longer expected to sacrifice a moment like that on the altar of their ambition.

Get thee to the maternity ward, Brett. It’s the only place to be when your baby is on the way. You won’t regret it.

How many bowlers does it take to win a Test series? The question is so fundamental that you would think there would be no argument about it. But the best team in the world isn’t sure what its answer is.

In the Ashes of 2005, Australia played four bowlers every time, as they had throughout their long years of walking all over England. In the first Test, the strategy worked, but then it quickly fell apart. England set out to bully one or two of the four, so that there were always weak links, starting with Mike Kasprowicz and Jason Gillespie. The Aussies saw the problem to the extent of replacing Gillespie with Shaun Tait. But they didn’t see that the real problem was having only four bowlers. The sixth batsman they were so keen to acccommodate, Simon Katich, wasn’t making many runs. To English eyes, it was obvious that they should drop him, along with a dud seamer, and bring in an allrounder, probably Shane Watson, and a second spinner, Stuart MacGill.

Australian crowds have the reputation of being the most hostile in the cricket world. And it’s widely believed that Monty Panesar, England’s new star spinner, will be a target for their vitriol with his sometimes farcical fielding. But the impact of crowds isn’t just about whether they are with you or against you.