*Official* Road to 2013 Ashes
 

Yesterday, I made my first bet on this series with an unconfirmed source.

I did a little searching, and the Road to 2009 Ashes thread was started in February 2008 which means this is an appropriate timeframe to start the thread. :whistling

There are some series I'm looking forwards to coming up (the rest of our current series, Saffa at home, India away) but with Australia potentially on the rise again, I now have a keen eye on the summer of 2013 because it could be a slobberknocker.

Key questions for me at this point are:

1. Are Australia 'back' or has this India series masked over cracks in their line-up?
2. Can England sustain the form of the last three years into the next year and a half, including the current series which is on a knife-edge?
3. Which players from either side are likely to miss the cut for this one? And who are candidates to force themselves into contention?

I'm sure this won't be hugely active immediately, but if I know CW it's a thread which will pop up now and again through this year and then start to get really busy. And if the usual 'Road to...' threads are anything to go by, then it's a good place to find Greigys after the fact.

Final thought: 5-0 to England.

Strauss' last series - leading the boys to a whitewash win.

I was thinking that, but as the next series afterwards is Australia away it's a bit awkward.

I've no doubt he would like to stay in the job long enough to lead us to another Ashes win, but firstly even if we keep winning, this form can't be tolerated forever.

So two things really.

1 - He needs to start scoring runs again at some point
2 - If he wants to lead us in the 2013 Ashes, he needs to lead us in the 2013-14 Ashes down there too. Can't be debuting a new skipper away to Australia.

What's more worrying is that he genuinely doesn't need to improve to keep his place. That position may be entirely justified - there's a lot to captaincy that we don't see - but I doubt it.

James Taylor to dominate.

Won't be picked.

Bairstow to dominate.

Decent shout

Swann has been full of praise for Strauss' leadership, for what it's worth.

As it is I don't think Strauss is in dreadful form - he hasn't scored a century against a team who wasn't Australia for 3 years now, but the Sri Lanka series aside, I don't think he's had a run of form that's been utterly shocking. His big problem at the moment is not converting starts - he's still averaging around 30, which while it isn't great, has tended to be because he's scored plenty of scores that are neither here nor there, as opposed to someone like Morgan who's scored 2 tons, a couple of 50s and a load of single digit useless stuff for his average of 33. And given the massive upturn in England's fortunes that coincide with his leadership, combined with the regard he's held in by his team-mates, I think Strauss' form would have to get a ****load worse before I started calling for his head.

Thread should really be called "Road to 2013/14 Mega Ashes tbh.

I think the series will come down to the batting. I'm still not convinced by Australia's batting - their top 3 this series has been pretty poor, opening stand at Perth aside. Full credit to Ponting and Clarke for getting Australia out of some pretty tricky situations, but I can't help feeling a more relentless attack, like England last winter, wouldn't have let Australia off the hook after picking up 3 early, cheap wickets.

Considered it tbh.

Assuming we get the usual Ashes subforum, hoping they decide to just do one subforum for the both series, epic

Surprised these series are still on - aren't Australia in a lower tier to us now?

Would explain why they've been playing India actually...

Agree with all of this.

Swann's praise is huge as well - reading his book, he's generally really critical of most captains (Hussain, Pietersen, Collingwood, etc.). But he heaps the praise onto Strauss. And from some of the stuff he says, the majority of Strauss' work is off the field anyway.

What did he say about Colly?

Wee Jimmy Taylor is better than Bairstow.