Rising from The Ashes

The Corridor, the cricket blog formerly known as The Corridor of Uncertainty is where I'll be getting the bulk of my online Ashes fix. Look out also for Andrew Miller at Cricinfo (an old mate of a mate, since you ask) and the Guardian Unlimited over-by-over team.

The BBC, I hear, are offering a daily highlights package on their website just in time for the first coffee of the morning, and my good buddy Sam is giving me the generous usage of his fine and Sky-equipped Clapham abode for when only staying up all night and watching live will do.

The Guardian's cricket email, The Spin, is starting to pick up form as the preparations hot up - here's the Freddy section of their run down of the England team's jobs:

Andrew Flintoff: Not a lot, really. Just captain the side, take 25 wickets, score 350 runs, hold his catches, win at least three tosses, deal with the media and smile. He can do it, as much because the Aussies believe he can as anything. Respect out here makes life so much easier.

And here's the thing. I reckon that the Aussies' confidence is shot. We've thought of them for so long as these unvanquishable sporting legends - now, they're shaken, and they're scared. They're older than even the too-old side that lost it last time. They're even seeing their rugby union representatives drubbed by the Irish, and now we hear the mighty Thorpedo has retired.

We've got a lot of hard work to do, but we're definitely in with a shot - and remember, they have to win the series outright to take the urn off us.

I'll leave you with a piece on one of the best parts of cricket at this psychological pitch by Simon Briggs, author of a book on the history of sledging in the Ashes, called Stiff Upper Lips and Baggy Green Caps. It contains a tale about our old friend Graeme Hick:

Perhaps the most sustained campaign of sledging ever seen in a Test series was the one mounted by Merv Hughes and the 1993 Australians against England's great white hope, Graeme Hick. "He was a real danger, we made no bones about it," Hughes said afterwards, "and the fast bowlers did target him. Because Graeme had such fantastic ability, we would test him in other ways."

Hughes's eclectic repertoire included "Does your husband play cricket as well?" and "Mate, if you turn the bat over you'll find the instructions on the other side." But there were plenty of less repeatable comments. The 1994 Wisden Almanack condemned Australia's captain Allan Border for "condoning, and not infrequently participating in, the sledging of opponents and umpires".

The review, here, quotes this little gem to redress the balance:

"How's your wife and my kids?" asked Rod Marsh from behind the stumps. "The wife's fine," replied the batsman, Ian Botham, "but the kids are retarded."

One day to go!