How, exactly, do you prepare a pitch for pace? I see two routes:

{i} Make it hard and fast.. so that even a second rate speedster like Lee or Tait can be a real hadful and so Harmison in particular can get balls of a fullish length lifting sharply into the batsmen.

{ii} Make is slow and low.. so that even an excellent bowler like McGrath can be handled... ensuring that only the really, REALLY fast bowlers stand a chance of delivering an unplayable delivery.

Option {i} sounds like the perfect pitch for Shane Warne (whose balls will turn on any surface and who does best when the "kick" of the fast and bouncy track is high and fast) and for McGrath / Gillespie / Kasprowicz (whose lively pace is more than adequate on such a lively surface).

Option (ii) would limit Warne and McGrath's aggressive options.. but of course... those two can make scoring almost impossible even on slow and low tracks.. and both McGrath and Kasprowicz have a great record of finding swing / seam movement when othersr can't... and Gillespie's Gough-like in his ability to trouble with variations in delivery even when conditions are against him.

The other point is that the majority of the Aussies prefer the sort of back-foot shots that tend to dominate on fast and bouncy tracks.

The way to deal with the Aussies has to be forgetting pace and preparing a damp minefield. Give conditions in which Flintoff's normally very ordinary deliveries are jumping and keeping low... where Hoggard is odds-on to swing the ball all over the shop... where Harmison's full length deliveries are seaming so wildly as to be virtually unplayable... and where batsman are basically not going to middle a ball in an entire session.

Then you need batsmen who can do what the Aussies can't, and thrive in such conditions: forget the strokeplayers and get Butcher and Thorpe crawling to half centuries off thick edges and leg byes.

Easy in theory.. but we've no longer got Hussain to grit it out.. and I'd not back the likes of Tresco, Strauss, Flintoff and Jones to do any better than the Aussies on such a track.