It was a faintly ridiculous, and certainly a surreal, situation. I knew I might be less than seven hours away from opening the batting in an Ashes Test in my own backyard. I was on 99 first class centuries. Everyone was willing me to get my hundredth hundred against Australia at Headingley, and I was uptight and tense about it. And yet, when I ought to have been fast asleep, I was embroiled in a conversation with the Night Porter about the oppressive, sticky heat.

The very idea that I could reach the landmark at Headingley seemed a fanciful notion to me. A fairytale that could never come true. Hand on heart, I didn’t think I’d do it myself. One false shot, one moment of ill-luck, and the chance would be gone. As soon as I scored my 99th century at Warwickshire, just five days earlier, the hype began. Rachel, who is now my wife, told me on the ‘phone:

‘You’ve gone and done it now.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked

‘Everyone will expect you get your hundredth hundred at Headingley.’

I kept the Post Office busy. A stack of good luck letters, telegrams (still fashionable then) and cards began to arrive immediately. On the eve of the Test I was still trying to read, let alone reply, to all of them. During our team meeting that evening, Mike Brearley noticed I wasn’t my usual self. When I asked to be excused from the general conversation, he didn’t hesitate before saying yes – and he didn’t need to ask why I wanted to retreat to my room.

I hoped I might effortlessly drop off to sleep after watching an hour or so of TV. Instead, I was awake and restless. I just couldn’t settle. Calling the Night Porter was the last, desperate resort. I liked to have eight or eight-and-a-half hours sleep. I actually got four. I took some pills – a rare thing for me – and promptly overslept. I woke up well behind the clock, rushing rather than easing into the rhythm of my normal routine. By the time I got to Headingley, I was feeling out of sorts: weary and heavy-limbed as well as a bit flustered. The 22,000 Yorkshire crowd, however, were the polar opposite. It was a strikingly beautiful morning – warm with blue skies – and there was exuberance and a sense of anticipation hanging in the air.

I always liked to have a practice knock before an innings. This time, I barely had time to strap on my pads and get into the nets. If the truth is told, I had my fingers crossed that we’d field first. I didn’t honestly feel awake enough to score runs. When Mike won the toss, and took the obvious decision to bat, I began to prepare as best I could. I knew I had to work the listlessness out of my system through force of will and concentration.

Even more responsibility rested on my shoulders when Mike was out in the opening over. But in retrospect I think his dismissal actually pushed me on. Within 20 minutes, I was a different man. I suddenly felt more relaxed and fluent. Whenever you cross the boundary rope, you’re essentially on your own. In the middle no one – the press, the public or any outside influences – can reach or touch you. You’re able to focus hard and purposefully on the job in the hand, which eases the tension. The first 10 to 15 runs were always the most difficult for me. Once I’d got those on the board, I thought I’d got a base on which to build. Soon I was middling the ball, and the tiredness began to drain away from me. It was replaced with a solid conviction about two things: this innings had to be treated like any other – and it had to be constructed around the basic principles I’d always employed. Play one delivery at a time; play at the tempo I felt was right for me; and play with a single-minded determination that blocked out extraneous thoughts. Whenever I played well, I took a long stride for someone who isn’t terribly tall. I took a long stride that day.

Naturally the Australians tried to unnerve me. I got a jaffa from Len Pascoe, which just flicked my left wrist band and went through to Rodney Marsh. You could have heard the appeal in Sheffield. Next, I went to turn an arm ball from Ray Bright off my hip. It clipped my thigh pad and there was another shout – long and intense. Bright was positively fuming when the umpire, Bill Alley, vigorously shook his head. The captain Greg Chappell had to calm him down, and Alley moved swiftly to rebuke him too. I am sure the Aussies – and especially Bright – are still adamant that I was out on at least one of those occasions. But I know that the ball didn’t get close to my bat.

In fact, I had only one moment of real trepidation. Somewhere in the 70s, I steered a short-delivery from Pascoe towards fine leg. My touch, however, was too firm. The ball went into the air and, for one awful second, I imagined Max Walker, who I knew was patrolling the area, pouching it. As I set off for the run, I waited for the crowd’s reaction. If I was out, there’d be dreadful sigh followed by a funeral silence. I heard cheers instead. The ball fell short of Walker and bounced awkwardly as he went to take it. It struck his knee and flew away for four. At lunch, I’d made 35. At tea, my score had moved on to 79. With an hour left, I was on 88. On 95, the climax building, I nudged Pascoe into the covers and took a single.

What happened next – with the shadows lengthening at 5.49pm – still amazes me. I still see it in super-slow motion. And I still feel enormously grateful and privileged that Fate destined it to be so. For the record, I believe in Fate. I’m convinced some things happen for a reason.

Chappell was bowling. I kept telling myself: ‘Just look for the gap around extra cover or through the on side’. In case I mistimed the ball in my enthusiasm, I was determined not to hook – even if Chappell dug one in invitingly. I’d faced 231 deliveries before Chappell came running in again. I’d struck 14 fours. The 232nd ball brought my 15th boundary – and my century.

In the millisecond it took for the ball to leave Chappell’s hand, I knew the shot I’d play to it; I knew where the ball was going; I knew it would bring up my century. I saw the delivery in striking clarity, almost in High Definition. And I played it as though I was standing outside myself; actually watching myself get into position for the on-drive. I got it in the middle of the bat and I watched the ball zip past the non-striker, Graham Roope, who leapt out the way.

I remember almost instantly raising my bat and then folding my arms over my head. I remember the applause, the noise rolling down from the stands and across the pitch. And I remember realising how much it meant to me and what I’d actually achieved. I was the 18th man to score one hundred hundreds: the first to do so in a Test. The crowd came on to the pitch, wanting to pat me on the back and yell their congratulations. I can’t recall what any of them said to me. I was aware, however, that I was sharing this magical hour with them – my people, my Yorkshire. There was an empathy between us. That night I rang two friends in particular: Michael Parkinson and Brian Clough. Brian’s wife’s Barbara said that he’d been due in a board meeting at Nottingham Forest. He phoned to tell them: ‘Start without me. I’m watching my mate make history on TV’.

I might have made my 101st century in that Test too. What people tend to forget – because the hundredth hundred obscures it – is that I went on to score 191 in our total of 436 before five wickets from Ian Botham and four from Mike Hendrick bowled out the Aussies for just 103. It remains their lowest ever total in a Headingley Test. We won by an innings and 85 runs – and Derek Randall took the catch from a Rodney Marsh skier at 4.39pm on the fourth day to regain the Ashes.

We’d originally won them back on the 1970-71 tour, held on to them in 1972 and lost against the pace of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in 1975. Injury deprived me of all but two Tests in 1972, and I didn’t go to Australia in ‘75. So the other Ashes series which sticks in my memory most strongly is 1970-71, and especially the fourth Test at Sydney. I batted as well there as I’ve ever done in my life.

The series was a meandering, inconclusive affair until Sydney. The first two Tests at Brisbane and Perth were drawn. The third, at Melbourne, was abandoned on the third day without a ball bowled. But sparks from the Sydney Test set things ablaze, and enabled us to make history. In those days, I regarded the pitch at the SCG as one of the finest in the world. It was shorn of grass and consequently had plenty of pace and bounce for the quick bowlers. As matches wore on, it also had enough in it for the spinners, who got good turn.

The game was pure theatre – captivating, absorbing cricket from first to last ball. As well as my own innings, it stands out because I’d never seen John Snow bowl better or more fiercely. He made a good length ball ride up uncomfortably into the ribs. Snow was nasty and dangerous, and the Aussies couldn’t handle him. Basil D’Oliveira also made a critical half century in our second innings, which merely emphasised his unflappability under pressure. He demonstrated a cool head – a calm, easy temperament, which he exuded whenever he came down the steps and through the pavilion gate.

After winning the toss, we made 332. Johnny Gleeson and Ashley Mallett claimed eight of our wickets – a sure sign of the quality of the pitch. The Aussies replied with 236 and it was my job to build on the lead. The surface was wearing, the spinners were wily and crafty and I had to watch each ball with a hawk-like eye. I made 142 not out in our total of 319 for five declared. I felt then, as I do now, that it was technically one of my most accomplished innings. With D’Oliveira, who hit 56, we put ourselves into the box seat.

The Aussies crumbled to Snow, who claimed seven for 40 and cut the ball brilliantly off the seam. He almost single-handedly dismissed them for a paltry 116, which gave us a huge winning margin: 299 runs – the largest England victory against Australia since Freddie Brown’s tourists beat Donald Bradman and company by more than 300 at Brisbane in late 1937.

Before we left England, no one gave us much of a chance of beating Australia. Only Douglas Jardine (with Bodyline) in 1932-33 and Len Hutton in 1954-55 had returned as Ashes winning captains. Ray Illingworth joined the pantheon. To win the Ashes is one thing. To win them in Australia was truly an incredible, exhilarating feeling. We didn’t, however, come home to ticker-a-tape parades and gongs at Buckingham Palace. While the country was ecstatic, and we were lauded as heroes, I recall that our perk was being invited down to Taylor’s of London, where each of us received a bottle of vintage port with our names on the bottle.

Extract taken from ‘Fire and Ashes: How Yorkshire’s Finest Took on the Australians’ published by Great Northern Books, August 2009.

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If the Australians had bowled out James Anderson or Monty Panesar at Cardiff, they would have won the match and then it would have been a drawn series. Likewise, if Shane Warne had caught Kevin Pietersen in the final Test at the Oval in 2005, the Aussies would have kept the urn.

It’s probably true that England had the rub of the green, but no one in this country will be crying about the Australians’ misfortune. They have come out on top too many times. Now, though, it is time to focus on the next big commitment for Andrew Strauss and company: the tour of South Africa that starts in November. Even after the euphoria of the last couple of days, there are still plenty of problems to address.

England’s biggest worry will be their top order. Strauss has given an object lesson all summer in the mechanics of batting: he has shown excellent balance, footwork and judgement of what to play and what to leave around off stump. At the other end, though, Alastair Cook has been all over the place. His technique has gone backwards, and it is imperative that he gets into the nets and works on his footwork over the next couple of months. He is fortunate that there are no other opening batsmen queuing up for his place.

Ian Bell is also looking out of his depth at No 3. The short ball is troubling him too much: he got out to it twice in the last two Tests, and took a number of blows on the gloves and the arm. The worst thing is that he isn’t even looking at the ball half the time. In South Africa, the pitches bounce, and the opening bowlers have plenty of pace. They will have noticed his struggles around his chest area, and if he comes in early against the hard new ball he is going to get peppered.

The return of Kevin Pietersen will give the middle-order a more imposing look, but the people around him are not convincing. Bell isn’t the only man struggling against the short ball. Speaking on the radio, Phil Tufnell compared Paul Collingwood’s dismissal on Friday night to himself batting at No 11. Collingwood may be alright in the comfort zone at No 5, where England have plenty of options now that Jonathan Trott has emerged as a potential star of the future. But you always need solid people at the top of the order. Ravi Bopara is a talented young player, but he has been found wanting up front as well.

I have said before that one good way of shoring up your batting is to play three openers up front. The new ball is crucial in Test cricket, so if you can blunt it, you are usually on the way to a decent score. There are a couple of other options out there in Robert Key, who is a mature player, and Hampshire’s Michael Carberry. I haven’t seen Carberry myself but I have heard that the selectors are taking him seriously.

Down at Nos six to nine, England will be looking to stack up a pile of all-rounders to make up for the loss of Andrew Flintoff. They don’t have an Ian Botham-type player – those only come along once or twice in a generation. So the alternative is to spread the load around. We have already seen Matt Prior, Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann show that they can score reliable runs, and I expect Adil Rashid to be added to the mix. He has jumped the queue ahead of Panesar after two successive county championship matches where he has scored an unbeaten hundred and taken five wickets in an innings with his leg-breaks. On top of that, he is a brilliant fielder in any position. With the case Rashid is making, I don’t think the selectors will be able to keep him out for much longer.

These are the areas that need to be addressed. It will be interesting to see how far they are prepared to stick their necks out when the touring squad is announced, in around a month’s time. There is certainly no room for complacency; England can’t start believing they are the best team in the world, as they did four years ago. But if they beat South Africa in South Africa, they might just be able to say that.

For England, Ravi Bopara had to go. Anyone who has played cricket could see he needed to be taken out of the kitchen. Things had simply got too hot for him. I’ve been in that position and I understand the anguish he must have been going through. It will hurt him to be dropped, but it will also be a relief to be away from the intense pressure.
 
The selectors were being consistent when they picked Jonathan Trott as Bopara’s replacement. We know Trott is in good nick, and the runs are flowing, but ability alone won’t get him through this Test. I hope the selectors have studied his character, because this is a one-off streetfight of gigantic proportions. The Aussies will not be silent when he arrives to bat. He’ll get some serious lip. He has to see it as a challenge, an opportunity to be a hero.

Ian Bell survived to move up the order and bat at No 3. But the jury is out. He has a nice record but too often gives it away. He has the strokes and the footwork, but flatters us and leaves us wanting more. He suffers lapses in concentration, discipline and choice of shot and gets out too easily. England can’t afford that. He is looks for the beautiful shots when sometimes you need to make a hardworking fifty.

Then there is Alastair Cook. Except for his partnership with Andrew Strauss at Lord’s, he hasn’t done a lot to change the course of matches in this series. He owes the team more. He still looks vulnerable to balls well pitched up around off stump. He gets his front leg too far across, his head falls over to the off side, and he has to play around and across his front pad. He pulls and hooks at everything without discretion. This is the time for him to get his act together.

Paul Collingwood should move up to No 4, the prime position. Without Kevin Pietersen he needs to step up and control the middle order. Collingwood has lots of experience, and he has had a week off to freshen himself mentally. There can be no excuses this time.

Without Pietersen in the side, Strauss is the best batsman and the guy who is in best form. He needs to make time for his own batting as well as to handle the other 10 players. At Headingley on that first morning, he must have been horribly stressed out. There was Matt Prior’s back spasm to deal with, as well as whether Flintoff would play, and who would replace him. It was the worst possible way to get your mind ready to bat. Strauss rushed off, got padded up, and was out almost as soon as he arrived to a poor waft at a wide ball.

It is vital Strauss gets all the batting practice he needs, and can focus on it with no distractions. He should have finalised the team yesterday, and told the players who was selected. That stops all the speculation and each individual can prepare accordingly. By making early decisions it shows everyone Strauss is thinking clearly.

When England are in the field, let’s have some urgency, especially when two Australian batsmen get in. This is a must-win game. Time may be important. So get that over-rate up. Dawdling at 13 overs an hour puts players in a lethargic frame of mind. If the captain is positive in his fielding and bowling changes, he keeps everyone on their toes. He cannot afford to let the match drift or go stale.

Strauss must keep himself and everyone up for the challenge over the whole five days. If rain or bad light takes a chunk out of the playing time, then it will become harder for England to win. His leadership is bound to come under intense scrutiny. We all know he’s a nice guy and a very good batsman. But is he a great leader? The next five days should settle the debate.

The batting and the bowling were rubbish but the batting is the biggest problem. If you don’t make runs in the first innings you are always under pressure.

Headingley has a reputation for results. The last 10 Test matches it has staged have been result pitches.
 
Spinners never win a match at Headingley. The last time that happened it was a freak pitch in 1972 that had fusarium disease and Derek Underwood bowled Australia out in his return to Test cricket.

So England should know from experience and history that the Headingley pitch seams. If you win the toss and bat first then there is bound to be some sideways movement, and you have to adapt.

The modern player is fed on a diet of crash, bang, wallop one-day cricket on mostly flat batting pitches. Shot-playing is necessary from the word go. Even Test pitches around the world have become so batsman-friendly and so easy to score on, with very little movement or bounce in comparison to those of the past.

There is an imbalance of the bat dominating the ball. Now we even have Twenty20 adding to the expectation of instantly whacking the ball. Players have become sucked into believing this is the only way to play international cricket.

The modern players talk about how they are fantastic batsmen. They say, “look at our strike rate. It is far superior to the players of the past. We hit more fours and sixes as well.” All that is true. But are they better batsmen in all conditions? The answer is no.

They don’t show patience anymore. They don’t know how to play swing bowling very well. When runs dry up and they have to concentrate over long periods they cock it up. They don’t like leaving the ball around off stump and with helmet and visors, padding on arms and chest, they hook and pull at anything short without discretion.

As soon as conditions demand anything but strokeplay on super batting pitches, they flounder and can’t adapt.

England had to accept that batting on that first morning in Leeds required playing carefully, which meant leaving every ball they didn’t have to play. They needed to stay in and wear down the bowlers. Even if they had scored only a few by lunch and kept wickets in hand, it would have been a platform for later on. Compared with what they actually managed, which was 72 for six, 50 for two would have been wonderful, wouldn’t it?

Look at the way our batsmen performed in the first innings. The captain, Andrew Strauss, started it off by playing at a wide ball without any footwork.

At the minute, Ravi Bopara is out of his depth. He is like a rabbit caught in the headlights and is run over before he goes in. He will come good again but only lower down the order.

When Ian Bell walked to the crease England were in trouble at 16 for two. He had sat on the balcony for a few overs and should have noticed the ball moving around. But what did he do? He had two great whooshes at balls from Mitchell Johnson that were one-and-a-half to two feet wide of off stump. One flew streakily over gully for four. The other, thank God, he missed. It was brainless batting.

We were 39 for three when Paul Collingwood came in and Stuart Clark bowled him a sucker ball pitched up just outside off stump, gently moving away. He off drove and was caught at second slip. Again, mindless batting.

In the second innings Alastair Cook and Strauss tried to play sensibly. They let balls go and made the bowlers bowl to them. They looked good for about 40 minutes until they lost focus. Then they started pulling and cutting and showed they couldn’t concentrate any longer.

As for the bowling, that was so bad it was indescribable. How James Anderson, Graham Onions and Steve Harmison could bowl so consistently short and wide beggars belief. Anybody who has played at Headingley knows Ryan Sidebottom should have been selected to pitch the ball up and kiss the surface. Anytime you bang it in short at Headingley it sits up and says hit me, unless the bowler can bowl fast, straight and at the throat of the batsmen. Any time you give them anything short and wide you get pulled and cut all over the place. You will be murdered.

England bowled so many four-balls my daughter’s school hockey team could have hit them. Thank God for Stuart Broad, who didn’t bowl anything special but did at least pitch the ball up and bowl on one side of the stumps, which was the off side, and took six wickets by doing that. Well done, lad.

All I can say about the Oval Test is get Andrew Flintoff on the pitch even if it is on one leg. If need be, carry him out to the middle on a stretcher. When he retires after the Oval, God help us this winter without his inspiration.

England won’t want to change their line-up. They have had the best of the last two Tests and you can tell by their body language that these players really believe they can beat Australia. The only worry is that Flintoff will have had just three days to rest his knee. Which is not much time to bring down the swelling and the soreness around the joint.

If things are looking dicey, Flintoff could end up playing mainly as a batsman. Even on one leg, he still has the ability to terrify the Aussies, and they will have nightmares about him producing the sort of big-hitting innings that Ian Botham once unleashed on Headingley.

Flintoff himself will be desperate to play; I can’t see him agreeing to miss the match unless he’s in hospital.

The chances are that Flintoff might have to cut back on his bowling a bit here, maybe by sending down eight or 10 overs in a day. If that is the case, then Broad’s lack of penetration becomes a problem.

Broad bowled a little bit better at Edgbaston, well enough to save himself if the balance of the team remains unchanged. But if England need a proper third seamer, I don’t believe he’s up to the job.

The choice will then come down to Steve Harmison versus Ryan Sidebottom. Conditions should dictate which way England go. I would normally recommend that they turn to Harmison, because he has been bowling well enough to justify a recall. My only reservation is that Headingley is not the sort of place where bang-it-in bowlers prosper. Sidebottom is a bit skiddier.

The best way to get life out of the pitch here is to kiss the top of the surface, something that Graham Onions does very well. He is the archetypal Headingley bowler, and when he was left out of the Durham team last year, we at Yorkshire were interested in whether he might fancy a move.

Headingley always used to be a result pitch, but Yorkshire recruited a groundsman from Lancashire, Andy Fogarty, and I’m afraid he has done too good a job. In the old days, the bowlers always thought they had a chance, while batsmen could make runs if they played well. Now, though, it’s very flat, like so many pitches around the world. The balance of the game has gone too far in the batsman’s favour.

If it swings, England should win, as they have the more threatening attack. The Aussies have been badly hampered by Mitchell Johnson’s loss of form. Because they do not have a genuine all-rounder, they are always one bowler short. They take two or three wickets in a rush, and then the pressure is released. The counterattacking 89-run stand between Flintoff and Matt Prior at Edgbaston was a classic example.

Selection is not clear-cut for Australia either. They could think about bringing in Stuart Clark, but he hasn’t had much bowling. As for Brett Lee, it would be madness to risk someone who has come back from a rib injury without letting him bowl in a practice match first. I don’t see how you can throw Lee in until after the game against the England Lions at Kent in 10 days’ time.

One option would be to swap Nathan Hauritz for Andrew McDonald, but England wouldn’t lose too much sleep over McDonald’s little medium-pacers. He’s the kind of bowler you see every week in county cricket.

Finally, I hope the crowd will behave when Ricky Ponting comes out to bat. I think it’s appalling that people have been booing him – just plain bad manners. I was taught that if you can’t applaud someone then keep quiet. The fans should be showing their appreciation for Ponting, who is a great player and a fine ambassador for the game.

The Australian players showed what quality people they are when several members of the team turned up at the City Square in Leeds for a three-hour civic reception with the mayoress. They dressed smartly, answered questions intelligently, and were a credit to their nation. So if you are sitting next to someone who is booing the Aussies this week, tell them to belt up. The Western Terrace has already got a bad reputation; we don’t want to make it any worse.

Even though they played well at Lord’s, everyone must remember that they have got only one hand on the urn. This is not the time to get carried away with themselves.

I see that Andrew Strauss came out and accused the Australians on Wednesday of lacking ‘aura’. Statements like that will motivate the opposition. He will look a real Charlie if England produce another let-down like the first four days in Cardiff. I don’t think there is much to choose between the teams, so it was a risky strategy for Strauss to go grandstanding.

England should be saving their aggression and energy for the match. Because the worst thing they could do is to fall into a defensive and cautious mindset in this game. With all the bad weather that has been around Birmingham over the past few days, it would be very easy for them to say: “All this rain should help us come away with a draw.” But my experience is that such negativity breeds indecision, paralysis, and defeat.

The whole England team should stay as positive as possible. The one thing that worried me about Strauss’s captaincy in the second Test was his tendency to put out the boundary-saving fielders too early. As soon as Australia got a partnership together, England tended to sit back and wait for something to happen.

Strauss could also push harder when a new batsman comes to the crease. That is the time to get at Test-class players, especially when you have a weapon like Andrew Flintoff up your sleeve. When Freddie is rumbling in at the new man, England should definitely have a short leg in there, and probably a leg gully, too.

In view of the amount of water that has landed on Birmingham recently, there probably won’t be as much bounce here for Freddie as there was at Lord’s. Still, I would be tempted to play Steve Harmison in place of Stuart Broad.

The trouble with Broad is that he can’t decide what sort of bowler he is trying to be: a wicket-taker or a steady line-and-length merchant. At the moment he is not doing either job satisfactorily.

It’s not so much the bowling I’m worried about, though. Most of England’s cock-ups of late have started with daft batting collapses. When you look at their top seven, you would expect two or three of those to receive good balls or make early misjudgments. The rest will probably get off to a decent start, and then it is up to them to make it count. Nice little cameos rarely, if ever, win Test matches.

People have been focusing on Ian Bell this week, saying that this is his last chance at Test level, and that he needs to show more steel at the wicket. I don’t necessarily buy that argument, because I feel that Bell has been a good player for England.

They should be concentrating more on Ravi Bopara. Bopara has plenty of work to do before I am convinced he is a No 3. He may have scored three hundreds on the trot against the West Indies, but the Australians are a bit better than that, and he has looked uncomfortable throughout this series.

Bell, Bopara and all the other batsmen need to remember that while a few flashy shots may get the crowd excited, batting is about discipline, concentration, patience and adaptability as much as it is about talent and skill. Look at the Cardiff Test: Australia made four centuries in the first innings, for the first time in Ashes history. England made none, and that is why they ended up scrabbling around to save the game.

It is crucial that England don’t give away any freebies in this Test and let the Aussies back into the series. If Strauss and company play well, then the opposition will have to be exceptional to win. And we have seen that they are not an exceptional side.

There are plenty of problems to keep Ricky Ponting up at night. Phillip Hughes has a big technical flaw when the ball is aimed at his ribs. He gets tucked up too easily, and the damage to his confidence means that he is not moving his feet too well early on. Mike Hussey is also struggling for self-belief after a grim year in Test cricket.

Among the bowlers, Mitchell Johnson is not bowling well, Brett Lee is not fit and Stuart Clark hasn’t had much cricket. So they have got a lot of question marks about their team. It is up to England to make sure that they don’t hand over the initiative by playing badly.
I still don’t think these Australians are good enough to seize the match without a little help. But that is no reason to go baiting them with silly statements.

Every home supporter must have felt anxious when Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook went out to bat on that first morning. But the openers laid the groundwork with their 196-run stand, and the rest of the team put in a superbly professional effort to close out the match.

Andrew Flintoff was magnificent. It wasn’t just the way he bowled – though that was special in itself. It was the way he lifted everyone else in the team and got the public on the edge of their seats. He must have been in serious discomfort, but he kept gritting his teeth and harrying the batsmen with his searing pace and frightening hostility. It was almost as if he was taking his pain out on the Aussies.

It would be easy to sit here and say “Same again, please, England”. But England have their worries with injury, and there are almost certain to be enforced changes to the team before the third Test starts in Birmingham. Kevin Pietersen, in particular, has very little chance of playing in that game. From the way he played at Lord’s, it’s clear that his dodgy Achilles is affecting both his batting and his whole mindset.

Pietersen’s two innings were hyperactive and fraught with danger. He was almost playing tip-and-run: as soon as he made contact with the ball, he was off for a quick single, and then limping when he made it to the other end. His hands were pushing hard at the ball, way in front of his pad, and his legs were all over the place, like a drunken giraffe.
Pietersen has always been a free spirit. He usually bats with an uncluttered mind, but at the moment he is being distracted by the pain, and his limited mobility. I understand that he opted against another injection at the end of the Test, and that is sensible, because too much cortisone rots your ligaments and tendons.

England would be daft to pick him for the third Test. If he found himself needing a runner or a substitute fielder, the Australians would be well within their rights to refuse, because the laws are stacked against anyone who comes into the game with a pre-existing injury.

While Pietersen is probably a non-starter for Edgbaston, Flintoff is a certainty. He will play whatever happens, because even on one bad leg, and with a gimpy limp, he was absolutely fantastic at Lord’s. Flintoff is mentally up for the challenge, but the problem is that with back-to-back Test matches coming up again, Strauss will have an almost impossible task trying to nurse his best bowler through the next fortnight. It is hard enough to play back-to-back Tests with fit bowlers, never mind an injured one who is limping.

One way of protecting Flintoff is to ensure that England’s other three seamers are all fit and firing. This ought to rule Graham Onions out for a start. At Lord’s, we were told that he was suffering from a niggly elbow, but it must be reasonably serious because we hardly saw him bowl in the second innings. It would be adding an unnecessary element of risk to go into the third Test with two suspect seamers.

Stuart Broad looks to be OK in a physical sense, but he just doesn’t do enough with the ball to be successful at this level. Against batsmen of the quality of Ricky Ponting or Michael Clarke you need to have some sideways movement, whether it be seam or swing. The only other option is to be exceptionally fast – which Broad is not. He may have bounced a couple of batsmen out in this series, but so far he is averaging one wicket every 16½ overs, which is putting too much strain on the other bowlers.

For me, England need to rebuild their attack. The fact that they won the last Test shouldn’t convince them to go for that old cliché: always stick with a winning team. In fact, the best time to make changes can often be when you are on a high.

The three bowlers who did the damage at Lord’s were Flintoff, James Anderson and Graeme Swann; the other two were just passengers. Which is why I would call up both Steve Harmison and Ryan Sidebottom for the next Test. It is always flat at Edgbaston and England need some fresh, fit guys with wicket-taking options.

The batting is straightforward enough. England have to bring in Ian Bell for Pietersen. Bell is averaging 80 this year for Warwickshire and he will be playing on his home ground. We can only hope that his enforced break from the side will have taught him the value of ruthlessness, because it is about time he started converting his twenties and thirties into more big scores. In any case, there is nobody else out there who is putting a convincing case.

I would bat Bell at No 3, as England did in the last two Ashes series, because I don’t think Ravi Bopara is convincing anyone that he is in the right position at the moment. Yes, he may have made three consecutive centuries against the West Indies, but he is fast discovering that the Ashes represent a different scale of challenge. This is the Oscars of Test cricket, and Bopara has been anything but self-assured. So I would keep him in the side, but drop him down to No 5.

Paul Collingwood, who has performed solidly in the two Tests so far, can move up to take Pietersen’s place at No 4. If the whole team put in another brilliant performance in Birmingham, they will be well on the way to winning the Ashes,

They were outplayed in every department of the game, and if they keep performing like that, I can see them losing the series 4-0.

I was worried after the first day, when Kevin Pietersen came to talk to the media and suggested that 336 for seven represented a good position. Which came as a surprise to me, given that six of England’s batsmen had scored between 30 and 69, and not one had gone on to make a hundred on an absolute pancake of a pitch.

Well, if the England players were full of themselves at the end of day one, they were not so cocky after day four. By that stage, they had been given a lesson in simple batting technique. The Australians – with the freakish exception of Phillip Hughes – all made a big stride forward, played straight, and hit the bad ball. There was no flashiness about their innings, and hardly any mistakes; they just manoeuvred the ball into the gaps, and kept the scoreboard ticking. Isn’t that what you’re taught at school?

The trouble with England’s batsmen is that they are one-dimensional. They only want to play with an attacking mentality, and when they are presented with a situation that demands a different approach, they cannot adapt.

On Wednesday they batted with gay abandon, scoring at four runs an over as if they were chasing a 50-over target. In all the excitement, they forgot to build the big partnerships that would have taken control of the game.

Pietersen has to accept a lot of the blame. He is England’s talismanic trump card, and yet he never puts his hand up to admit he made a mistake. He never says “That was poor judgement” or “I should have pulled out of the shot”. If he could only bring himself to do that, we would respect him for being honest and human. But instead he always diverts attention on to something else. In this case, he blamed the helmet. How dare it get in the way of such an audacious sweep shot, by such a great player? Give the helmet a smack!

My concern is that there is no one in the England set-up who will go up to Pietersen and tell him that this is not good enough. Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower are both quiet men, and frankly I do not think they have got the courage.

Pietersen is like a spoilt child, the family favourite who can get away with anything because he is such a golden boy. Until someone takes the trouble to discipline him, he will keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. Of course, he is still the best player by miles, but his erratic performances are bound to have a negative effect on the rest of the team.

Test cricket is like chess. You have to search for an opening. If you just blitz all your pieces out there in the first few moves, you are going to lose far more often than you win. But England do not seem to appreciate the value of building slow pressure on their opponents. We saw the same thing in the field. As the pitch got flatter, they just kept trying to bowl batsmen out. Nobody could bowl maidens or dot balls or cut the scoring-rate down.

The captaincy was poor from Strauss. In fact it was shocking. He didn’t open with Andrew Flintoff, even though Flintoff terrorised Simon Katich four years ago and caused all the left-handers problems. It was obvious that England should have opened with Flintoff to see if there was still any psychological damage there. He is also the best bowler.

Strauss then went too defensive too early, stationing too many men on the boundary for bad balls. He does s not have a feel for the nuances of the game. And don’t tell me he will grow into the captaincy because he won’t. History shows that people like Douglas Jardine, Brian Close, Ray Illingworth and Michael Vaughan were natural leaders who took to the job quickly. Strauss is a nice guy, and a decent bat, but not a great captain.

Thanks to some sturdy batting from the tailenders, England now have a chance to redeem themselves – which they do not deserve. But if they pitch up like that again at Lord’s, it doesn’t matter who they pick, because they will get murdered. History is against them, because they have not beaten Australia there since 1934. They have a couple of days to do some serious appraisal and rethink their whole approach to the game of Test cricket.

The nearer we’ve got to the first Ashes Test, the more I’ve come around to thinking that England have a great chance of winning.

If we break this series down into five categories – captaincy, seam bowling, spin bowling, batting and fielding – it seems to me that England have the advantage in at least two and can compete on level terms in the rest. Which is a big change from recent series when, on paper at least, it has been Australia all the way.

CAPTAINCY
The Aussies have had a lot to say about targeting the England captain, Andrew Strauss. They point out that there will be a lot of pressure on him, as he is a new leader in his first Ashes series. But the good thing is that Strauss is batting well and is a pretty phlegmatic character. Besides, targeting can work both ways.

Ricky Ponting will be a key factor in this series. He has never won a series in England. It is the one thing missing from his CV and deep down he is still smarting over the Ashes loss of 2005. His desire and determination are strong but his form is patchy at best. If England can get him out cheaply a couple of times, his ambition could start to work against him. He could get irritable and frustrated and you might see him start to lose his cool.

Ponting has been Australia’s go-to man for the past five or six years, and the best batsman in the world, too. But his figures over the past 12 months have been disappointing. The best way to get him out is not to bowl too straight, because he loves working it to the on side. Early on, pitch it up outside the off stump, and make him hit it through the covers off the front foot.

SEAM BOWLING
The English Dukes ball swings more than the Australian Kookaburra and it has a bigger seam. This was a problem for the Aussies in 2005, because they take the ball early in front of their pads, and that is the worst way to play when it is moving around. With swing, you should look to see it early and play it late. Let the ball come to you with relaxed hands. In 2005, too many Australians went hard at the ball too early.

Andrew Flintoff also created problems for their left-handers, Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden and Simon Katich, by going around the wicket and reverse-swinging the ball away from the bat. Four years later, Flintoff is still there and Stuart Broad can do it too. James Anderson can swing it early and reverse it later. He is England’s best bowler if it moves in the air.

Australia have had the best fast bower in the world over the last year in Mitchell Johnson. He can really hurry batsmen. But they have problems backing up Johnson. Brett Lee has a rib strain, misses the first Test and maybe the second, while Stuart Clark, their control man, has been short of practice since coming back from an injury of his own. Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus are hit-the-deck bowlers, but all the indications are that the Cardiff pitch will be true in bounce and slow in pace, which is not ideal for them.

There’s no guarantee that England will play Graham Onions, but the conditions might suit him more than anyone else. He gets close to the stumps and bowls wicket to wicket, which leaves no width and no angles for the batsmen to work with. On these sort of pitches, metronomic accuracy forces batsmen to get forward. They have to play with a lot of patience, and the frustration can get to them.

SPIN BOWLING
England are streets ahead in this department, because the Australians have no convincing spin option. They will have to really feel that a pitch will turn before they select Nathan Hauritz. He has played only four Tests, and is far more of a one-day bowler who likes to keep it tight and pick up the odd wicket when a batsman comes after him. If he bowls England out in this series, they should feel embarrassed – humiliated even.

Lining up on the other side is Graeme Swann. The Australians have four lefties in their top six, and Swann is very dangerous against them. He spins the ball appreciably, and his sliders will get lbws. Batsmen can’t just kick it away when it is outside off stump, because in recent times umpires have been very receptive to giving batsmen out lbw for pretending to play at the ball.

BATTING
The Australian middle order is their greatest strength. They have three strong, mature, high-scoring batsmen in Ponting, Michael Clarke and Mike Hussey. But they also have two newcomers to Ashes cricket in their top six: Phillip Hughes, who could be a sensation or a flop, and Marcus North.

England’s only newcomer is Ravi Bopara. And they also have the ace in the pack, the best batsman on the park, in Kevin Pietersen. So there’s not much to choose between the sides here.

FIELDING
The biggest thing here is wicketkeeping, and Matt Prior and Brad Haddin are much of a muchness. Both can bat and make very good attacking runs, but neither is a great keeper. They are prone to mistakes, and the law of averages suggests that at least one of them is likely to miss a crucial, match-turning catch or stumping at some point in the series.

As for catching around the field, both sides are strong, with some great slippers in particular. Catches win matches, and they decide series too. Remember, if Shane Warne had caught a dolly in the slips off Kevin Pietersen on the last day of the 2005 Ashes, Australia would have held the Ashes for the last 20 years.