Burning for the Ashes

Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust
If Monty don't get you then Anderson must

(traditional Ethiopian doggerel popular in the shanty settlements of northern Addis Ababa)

5 matches. 5 mighty conflicts which determine, at one level, which of two nations is best at the noble game of cricket and, at another, perhaps more ethereal level, whether a nation formed on the regurgitation of all that was worst of the motherland has finally broken free of colonial shackles, or whether The Mother Country still fondly indulges her wayward infant in it's unruly and boisterous claims for independence before correcting the naughty child with a gentle smack..

10 weeks. A veritable Trojan War, and like the battles of ancient Ilium, containing many heroic individual rivalries. Agamemnon vs. Priam, Hector vs. Achilles will be reborn in Anderson against Ponting, Flintoff against Hussey et al.

A titanic struggle awaits. Many imponderable questions will be answered. Is Philip Hughes, the boy from the back blocks the next Bradman? Can Jimmy get the reverse swing going in the manner of 05 hero Simon Jones? Will Freddy stay off the booze?

2005 saw an English performance Churchillian its its doggedness, its determination and above all in its desperate quest for victory. 07 was an annihilation. What will 09 bring?

For England, the quintessentially English Pietersen and Strauss are key men. They are the 6th formers that every new boy aspires to emulate - the dashing card, and the sober head boy. Anderson and Flintoff, the kids from the wrong side of the tracks who's scholarships have enabled them to join their finely bred teammates on the hallowed sward. can they unite to claim a famous victory?

A nation holds it's breath, and we await, breathless too, with fingers crossed, our aspirations that dare to dream, of an English side who once again reclaim the Ashes from the old foe.

Bayete!