Well the tour gets under way on Friday with the first warm up match in Western Australia followed by fixture against South Australia and finally Australia A team. 3 good fixtures as warm ups before the big kick off in Brisbane on November 25th.

Speaking of Brisbane, the shield game at the Gabba the other day only lasted 2 days with some pace bowler picking up match figures of 11 for 52 on a nice green wicket!!! Another wicket in 3 weeks time please Mr Groundsman should suit England's attack nicely......

I'm gonna stick my neck out and say we are gonna retain the Ashes!
Not sure whether we're good enough to win the series outright or will scrape a draw though

Never have a better chance as our bowling attack is a lot better than the Aussies....only concern is the batting...we need KP to fire and then i think he will drag the other batsmen along with him.

Makes laugh all the concern about KP when Cook is looking dodgey and Collingwood and to a extent Trott as well.

I'd venture that the Aussies batting is worse than ours.

England 3 Australia 1 for me.

OUCH, that must have hurt!

Aus had SL 107-9 chasing 240 to win and then SL produced a record 10th wicket partnership to knock off the runs

Makes you almost feel sorry for them.

There's far too much optimism around concerning the Ashes.

Australia getting turned over by Sri Lanka in the T20s/ODIs is the last thing England would want to see.

It is the weakest Aussie side I can remember since the late 80s.
I can understand tempering the optimism somewhat but we have to go out there and play with no fear, they are so far away from being the dominant force of recent years it's untrue.

and now they're talking about dropping Watson down the order to replace Marcus North - I assume then Phil Hughes steps in.

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me - Watson has been very consistent at the top of the order.

Your glass is always half empty obviously, whereas mine is half full