Key England Ashes players

[Paoli]

Who holds the key for England winning the Ashes??

[Teatime FatCat]

Can't answer with one, but I think Vaughan & Strauss with the bat, Freddy and Harmy with the ball.

[Lee Johnson]

Ashley Giles, a lot will depend on how he bowls.

[Paoli]

Well Its a multi choice poll so vote for them if u wish.

[Milo]

Vaughan and Harmison. Reason being, I think you know what you're going to get from the others. Vaughan, however, can score between 200 and 600, and Harmison can take between 10 and 30 wickets. We need 600 from Vaughan and 30 from Harmison. Otherwise it will be over by the end of the third test.

For what it is worth, I do believe Thorpe will be our best bat by a long chalk, but he has been before in Ashes series and we still got stuffed. Giles is also important. I think he will have a poor series. His overall performance will be critical. And the keeper needs to score 300 runs.

[Occasional Fan]

I think the answer to be honest is "All of the above". Against Australia of 2005, there is no one player who is going to see us through. We are going to need 11 players playing out of their skins on every single day of every single test match if England are to pull off a victory this year.

[Seamer]

Originally Posted by Occasional Fan

I think the answer to be honest is "All of the above". Against Australia of 2005, there is no one player who is going to see us through. We are going to need 11 players playing out of their skins on every single day of every single test match if England are to pull off a victory this year.

Actually, in recent years, it has generaly been individual brilliance rather that team performance that has brought down the Aussies. Names that come to mind are - Lara, Laxman, Dravid, Butcher, H.Singh. Too lazy to look up the scores and dates though.

[Trescothick]

I voted for the following:

Marcus Trescothick - Its important he gets us off to the right start and i feel its his time this Ashes... He could be the difference between the two..

Kevin Pieterson - He simply must play and we have to see some good scores from him in the middle order... He might just win it for us.

Andrew Flintoff - Very important hes an all-rounder

Ashley Giles - We need a spinner to be on form, its important he steps up and gives us that option, delievers it well and gets a important 30-40 of the bat on the odd occasion


Those are my feelings.. Good poll mate.

[Maranello]

Seamer you are correct to an extent. However, the exploits of the likes of Butcher, though instrumental in winning a single Test, are quite insufficient in winning/saving a Test series. For that, you either need a genius to fire every single day of a series, a la Lara in the home series against the Aussies, or two or three exceptionally good players to have an extended purple patch, as Dravid, Laxman, Kumble and Harbhajan have done on more than one occasion in a whole series.

However, England do not have a batsman of the class of Dravid, or a spinner as good as either Kumble or Harbhajan, and hence need more than mere sporadic brilliance from one or two performers if they are to challenge the Aussies over a whole summer. In the most recent example, Akhtar and Kaneria produced many moments of individual magic to momentarily rock the Australian band-wagon; however, as the other 7 or 8 Pakistani players were not of the same class, Australia won convincingly.

[Richie Benauds Love Child]

I'd agree with maranello. Even though we won the SA tests we had far to many passengers ie harmo, jones/anderson (mainly as one wasnt used and one was ****e) Key/butch, freddie with the bat. The key players for me will be g jones, any poor glovework may well be very very costly, and the 3/4th seamer. Who is it going to be and are they going to get more than 4 overs a day with an old ball ? Jones bowled more than normal but not really enough but he was expensive at time. Still an area of concern for me.