Wednesday, 20 July 2005

Preparing yourself for the Ashes

You need to be in the right frame of mind for a test series, especially one on the other side of the world. You need to know who the players are, what their form is like where the crucial match-ups will lie. To help you prepare for the Ashes series, I have compiled a short list of essential reading:

To ease you into the mood, we start in the Telegraph with a piece on the joys of watching cricket and the tension of waiting for the series to start.

After that relaxing start its time to throw you to the wolves, or a lone wolf anyway, as Glenn McGrath talks up Australia's chances and down England's batsmen.

Having profiled one of Australia's big guns, it is time to profile one of England's. Ian Bell is not a big name yet on this side of the globe, but his name was chiselled into the English batting order well ahead of Kevin Pietersen and Graham Thorpe.

Having mentioned Kevin Pietersen, we had better profile him. Crazy-haired egotist that he is.

Okay. We've heard from the Englishmen, now back to those darn big-name Aussies. Brett Lee will play. Adam Gilchrist will walk. And Michael Clarke is in a rut. Maybe.

We end, as all good cricketing summaries should, with some very helpful statistical analysis.

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