Is it a reflection on modern-day cricket reporting that in all the recently revealed mobile telephone conversations attributed to the ever-popular Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne there was nary a mention of how he and his on-field cohorts intend to keep the Ashes out of the hands of a promisingly revitalised England? Maybe Warne anticipated that the personalities at the other end of the line were sure to have more on their minds than a bit of dressing-room scuttlebutt that Marcus Trescothick is still Glenn McGrath's bunny. Marcus's plight is just one of a bunch of theories, some of them unfavourable to Australia, which have been circulating on cricket's grapevine and which could impact on the contest. One: Australia were afforded a less than ideal Test series build-up, almost no "long" cricket to fine-tune techniques, just a dog's breakfast of lightweight limited-overs slogathons that ensured a bottom line more bountiful than any traditional half-dozen lead-up games against counties ever could.Fair enough. Ask an Ashes debutant puzzled by foreign pitch conditions what he would prefer, a three-day county match and a 1970s pay packet or a bit of sloggo and a 2005 pay packet and you know what the answer will be! Still, one county match does seem a little stingy to offer the latecomers like Justin Langer and, to a lesser extent, Warne's shadow Stuart MacGill, the chance to acclimatise. I tell you, none of this would be happening now if I had continued the way I was."Everything converged at the right time, as though Jupiter was in happy alignment with Venus in the astrology columns. His agent, mentor and former team-mate Neil Fairbrother gave him a dressing-down, and then he met his future wife, Rachael. The pair now have a baby daughter, Holly."Off the pitch, my life is perfect The family travel around with me We have got a baby who's great It's a stark contrast from life pre-Rachael. It was all over the shop, wasn't it? She's very organised and she tries to organise me, we have come to a happy medium where I have improved and I have dragged her down a little bit to be a bit more laid-back, so we've compromised."But I refuse to tidy my bag up, because it just opens and everything falls out.

I was watching people who were playing and thought that should be me I had got by on talent for a long time. Well, not got by, I had to take it up to a different level, I had to start using it. "I was lucky to be playing for Lancashire and was going through a bad patch to say the least. Then in Australia there was the whole d?cle over my groin and I only played one one-day international and then came back. This time, I have played some of my best cricket over the last year or so, so it isn't really a bad time to be playing."Flintoff's assertion is well supported. Two years ago, when he had just turned the corner, he was interviewed by this newspaper just as he was about to face South Africa. His Test batting average then was 19.48 and his bowling average was 47.15.

Those figures have now changed, raised in the first case to 32.45 and reduced in the second to 33.33, both perfectly respectable and both heading relentlessly in the right directions."It took time for the penny to drop," he said, recognising that like an alcoholic he first had to concede that he had a problem before he could improve. "When I had two years out in the cold, I thought it was a chance of a fresh start, I wasn't bothered about what had gone before."I just knew better what an international cricketer had to do, training hard, practising better, not so much more but better. I'm getting a chance to do one, and hopefully the other one will be in 2007."So did Freddie sum up what all that begins on Thursday is about. It is not lost on Flintoff, and actually it is very much to the fore of his mind, that while it is true that this might have been his fourth Ashes series (1998-99, 2001 and 2002-03 were the possible others) there might have been none at all."Last time Australia were in England I was terrible," he said.

The anticipation is so great, the expectations so high that careers could very well be defined by what happens in the next eight weeks, not least that of England's great all-rounder. As it is, on Thursday at Lord's of all places, the man long since rebranded as Freddie Flintoff will appear in a Test match against Australia for the first time. He is 27 now, and he is ready for this moment. "The build-up started when we went to South Africa in the winter," he said last week, sitting in front of the old pavilion at Old Trafford. "You boys began talking about it, and what has been written and said is anything and everything to do with the Ashes, and all sorts of things that don't really matter."I'd be lying if I said I hadn't had one eye on it, with the interest from the man in the street, the bog-standard question, 'Are we gonna do 'em, then?' Because I have never played in one, this [series] is going to be extra special, and irrespective of what I have done in the game so far, come September I will be judged on how I've done this summer, and so will the team and everybody in it."I'm slightly nervous but it's excitement more than nerves, I want to play in it, it's all you think about when you are younger You want to play in an Ashes and a World Cup final. The form of Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz, while fodder for amateur selectors eager to drop someone, is of no account while Brett Lee is bending minds and Warne likely to do likewise.Warne's hogging of the early tour headlines, achieved without him even delivering a single teasing, exploding leg-spinner, merely confirms what a strange tour this Ashes one has been thus far.Whether it remains compelling viewing will depend on more conclusive evidence of England's revival than just their recent performance against lesser Test opponents than Australia. By now, had he looked after his body and had the favour been reciprocated, he might have been playing in his fourth Ashes series. Think of this contest like you would a horse stepping up from a selling race at Haydock to the Epsom Derby..

In 1998, a callow blond giant called Andrew Flintoff played for England for the first time. The trick England have to take is this: make Gilchrist take singles not smash fours.Bowlers cannot win matches unless they are backed by brilliant fielding. The plethora of limited-overs matches may have improved England's; Australia's remains the poorer for the retirements of Mark Taylor and the Waughs.England's batting looked wobbly once McGrath found his feet. And right from the moment he came in.In Gilchrist's case that would mean a deep point, a deep forward square-leg and a deep mid-on, straightish.