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Originally Posted by theegyptian
England are definitely home favourites. You basically know what you're going to get with England. Solid but unspectacular cricket with a lot of planning put into the series.
The Australian performance is more of an unkown. The bowling is very exciting and has good strength in depth but is inexperienced in English conditions and injury prone. They definitely have the potential to blow england away if they get it right. They also have the potential to struggle in the conditions- plenty of very fine bowlers have struggled in their initial test matches in england.
The Australian batting though is their big worry. Clarke and Watson apart no-one else has played test cricket in england and Clarke is the only genuine current class batsmen. Warner may move into that bracket but the rest don't look like moving into that bracket anytime soon. I don't know if people think Clarke's form is a temporary positive aberration on a good career(see Vaughan) or a permanent upturn but if Clarke was to run out of form it's hard to see how Australia could win in England.
I also don't see Cook having a good year. Cook tends to struggle against medium pace swing and seamers and conditions in NZ and the home test series against NZ will be in the bowlers favour. He should struggle against Australia's seamer as long as they don't resort to trying to intimidate him and bowl short. He'll probably still do well in Aus where there is less movement early.
New Zealand is the only test country Cook hasn't got a test century against so hopefully he makes that.
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Hughes has as well tbf.
But yeah our inexperience is a worry.