Dylan Cleaver: Ashes to ashes

The players who will shape the series


Andrew Strauss Captain, opening bat
Australia always targets the captain, believing that if they can expose weakness in the man leading the side, that will filter down to his subjects.

While it sounds hackneyed and a wonderful example of kidology, it has worked too often in the past to be discounted (think Andrew Flintoff in the last Ashes series in Australia). Mind you, there was the small matter of a vastly experienced bowling attack leading the charge back then, including the greatest wrist-spinner the game has seen and one of the best seamers.

It doesn't quite sound the same coming from, say, Stuart Clark, but he gave it a whirl anyway.

"Being the captain, if we put some pressure on him early, I reckon we can make some real inroads," Clark said.

"I'm not going to say I'm going to target him individually but I think being captain, there's a lot of pressure on him now.

"If we can really get after him early on in the series, we can maybe create some extra pressure that he maybe doesn't need with his batting."

The numbers don't stack up well for Strauss ahead of his first Ashes campaign as skipper.

Against his excellent test average of 43.96, outstanding for an opener who plays more than half his tests in England, is the slightly anaemic average of 32 against the Olde Enemy in 10 tests. He averages slightly more than three runs less in home conditions and has scored the bulk (10) of his 17 test centuries away from home. On the plus side, he punctuated an otherwise disappointing 2005 Ashes series with two brilliant centuries, one at Old Trafford in a test England were only the wicket of bunny Glenn McGrath away from winning, and at the final test at The Oval, when he did as much as Kevin Pietersen to save the draw, with 129 in the first innings.

He had no such luck Down-under when, despite looking in great touch early in the tour, he kept finding ways to get out, a solitary 50 at the MCG his only taste of success. Crucially, the burden of captaincy seems not to have weighed heavily on his batting. Quite the opposite - he has averaged 57.78 while leading England.

James Anderson New-ball bowler
He might not have a little curl right in the middle of his forehead but just like That Little Girl, when Anderson is good, he is very, very good and when he is bad, he is horrid.

Turns out that for most of the past two years he has been very, very good. Just short of express pace, Anderson nevertheless delivers the ball at a very good clip and swings the new ball away. Even better - when he comes on for his second and third spells, he often gets prodigious reverse-swing.

As Kevin Pietersen points out, with England set for another hot, dry summer, just as it was in 2005, conditions could be perfect for practising this craft.

"I'm sure the Australians are probably hoping that the weather doesn't stay like this, because Anderson, Broad, Flintoff bowling reverse swing - I wouldn't want to be facing that," Pietersen said.

"We're going to be really tough to play against. If batters do conquer our reverse-swing, I look forward to watching them. It will take some serious batting against those bowlers, all at 90mph, reverse-swinging it both ways."

Stuart Broad is in just his first Ashes series and Flintoff is, at best, a fading force with the ball. The onus will fall on Anderson, as Pietersen acknowledged in his typically forthright manner.

"When I saw Anderson doing it at Durham against the West Indies, I said 'how do you face that?' I know as a batsman who goes okay against swing bowling, to face that is the biggest test of all."

Which is all well and good but Anderson's problem is that when it isn't reversing, he serves up big bowls of tripe.

He has played just three Ashes tests, his five wickets costing an astronomical 82.60 runs each (which compares poorly against his overall test average of 33.91) while being pasted at a rate of 4.42 runs per over. However, in the past two years, he has taken 66 wickets at under 30 runs each, so he is a much better player than he was.

Ricky Ponting Captain, No 3
This goes beyond the reversal of Australia's schtick, which is to target the opposition captain.

Ponting will be in England's crosshairs simply because, when it comes to batting, he is the side's talisman. Australia's fortunes often mirror Ponting's.

Intriguingly, Ponting has never done well south of Lancashire. Two of his three centuries in England have come at Headingley (127 in 1997, 144 in 2001) and the other was his magnificent back-to-the-wall 156 in the heart-stopping 2005 draw at Old Trafford.

Headingley is back on the Ashes calendar this year but Old Trafford has been removed in favour of the series opener at Cardiff's Sophia Gardens.

England has other reasons to be optimistic against Ponting.

His average in England is 42.63, a whopping 14 runs down on his overall average. Even more concerning for the Australians is that he is averaging 32.87 this calendar year and has yet to add to his 37 test centuries. When it comes to captaincy, Ponting's superb effort in getting his inexperienced side over the line in South Africa recently seems to have counted for nothing in Jeff Thomson's assessment of the Tasmanian.

On the eve of the Ashes, he launched a scathing attack on Ponting's captaincy credentials.

"I thought Ricky was [rubbish] when he was first captain in 2004 and nothing much has improved since then," Thomson said last week.

"I'm not the only one who thinks that. I've always bagged him and everyone at home thinks he's [rubbish] at the captaincy. He's a great player but captaincy is a totally different thing.

"You see it on him - he gets frustrated. He worries when the players don't do what he's used to with the ball when he passes it to them. This is half the reason he's got a bloke in there who can't even spin a ball [Nathan Hauritz]. He just wants someone to bowl tight but that's not going to get you wickets. The choices he makes, his field settings and the things he does are never right.

"England have the edge in the captaincy department."

Marcus North No 6, part-time spinner
So bleak are Nathan Hauritz's prospects of taking wickets as Australia's only specialist spinner, if you believe most of the pundits anyway, that North, with just two tests behind him, could become one of the most pivotal figures of this Ashes campaign.

The 29-year-old scored a century on debut against South Africa at the Wanderers and will almost certainly occupy the crucial No 6 position, despite his tour barely having got off the ground following a double failure against Sussex and a score of 1 in the first innings of the final warm-up match in Worcester.

He will benefit from the likely absence, in the first test anyway, of allrounder Shane Watson but it is Hauritz's expected struggles that could bring his contribution into sharper focus. Hauritz, the only specialist slow spinner in the squad, gave up 1 for 158 in 38 overs in the warm-up match against Sussex at Hove and was singularly unimpressive.

North's off-breaks (he took two wickets in South Africa) could prove the tipping point for Hauritz.

Interestingly, North's 98 first-class wickets at 42.69 compares favourably to Hauritz's 88 at 46.53.

"It's probably something I've joked about over the years but I've taken my bowling extremely seriously over the last 18 months," North told the Canberra Times recently.

"Without my bowling, maybe I wouldn't have got that test call-up in South Africa. It adds to the balance of the side and giving Ricky [Ponting] as many options as he can is beneficial.

"It's something I've worked hard on and I feel I've put enough hours in game time and performances with the ball so that I can hold my own and certainly be a wicket-taking option for Ricky. I feel I'm capable of offering that role, along with Michael Clarke and Simon Katich."

If North can chip in with the odd wicket and provide runs at No 6, it gives the tour selectors the option of playing an extra seamer and that could be a vital tipping of the balance towards the visitors.