Why This Fight For The Ashes Is Always Such A Lengthy Business

Derek Pringle identifies an aspect of the game in England that has been a problem for Aussie pace attacks despite their success at home

Australia hold the Ashes after winning the last series Down Under, but they have been unable to get their hands on the urn over here since 2001.

Home advantage has proved a powerful asset for the hosts but even so, for a team that nearly always boasts a potent bowling unit, it has been a long drought for the Aussies to bear and one the current crop, led by Pat Cummins, will be looking to end this summer.

Cummins has yet to play a Test in England, so the forthcoming Ashes will be a novelty. The infirmity caused by numerous back injuries that blighted his early career appears to have become more manageable and while he has played just 20 Tests, he has become Australia’s go-to bowler in an attack not short of slouches, assuming the selectors pick Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood as his main accomplices.

The trio, with perhaps James Pattinson and Mitchell Marsh in reserve, are likely to be backed by Nathan Lyon’s off-spin.

That main trio, if you switch Mitchell Johnson for Cummins, more or less did their bidding over here in 2015, a series the Aussies lost 3-2, though England’s second defeat, in the final Test at the Kia Oval, did come after they had already regained the Ashes.

As such, it can be discounted from the forthcoming analysis.

The question many have asked, given that England had been whitewashed in the preceding Ashes, in Australia, is how does an attack, so effective and clinical on the hard, true pitches of the Southern Hemisphere, lose that edge when it travels north?