Brisbane,
\nNew-look Australia will bank on their pace attack terrifying England once again when two unfamiliar line-ups open hostilities for the Ashes, the oldest prize in Test cricket, in Brisbane on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s surprise selections raised plenty of eyebrows but they will hope their pace trio of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins can replicate Mitchell Johnson\u2019s devastating bowling at the Gabba ground in 2013.<\/p>\n
England also have an untested batting line-up and their campaign to retain the Ashes urn was dealt a major blow when star all-rounder Ben Stokes was suspended pending investigations into a brawl outside a nightclub.<\/p>\n
The build-up to the biennial series, which dates back to the 19th century, has been traditionally feisty, with opener David Warner saying he regarded facing England as \u201cwar\u201d and several Australian players reminding the tourists of their treatment by Johnson four years ago.<\/p>\n
The firebrand left-armer set the tone for the 2013-2014 Ashes with his ferocious fast bowling to take nine wickets at the Gabba as the Australians inflicted a crushing 381-run defeat, triggering a 5-0 series rout.<\/p>\n
The Starc-led pace trio have never bowled together in a Test but they stack up favourably with Australia\u2019s greatest pace combinations, with their combined career strike rates better than their gloried predecessors.<\/p>\n
Australia have a formidable record at Brisbane\u2019s intimidating \u2018Gabbatoir\u2019 where they have not lost a Test match since 1988, and where England are winless in 31 years.<\/p>\n
Starc appears key to Australia\u2019s series hopes and he has targeted England\u2019s big two batsmen, captain Joe Root and former skipper Alastair Cook, in the five-Test series.<\/p>\n
\u201cCook and Root are the two main ones at the top who have played a heck of a lot of cricket and done really well at home and away,\u201d Starc said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth of them are guys we have to focus heavily on in hopefully getting them out cheaply and getting stuck into that inexperienced batting order.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starc said watching footage of Johnson\u2019s fireworks at the Gabba four years ago had inspired him to replicate his match- winning performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all still are (inspired). Whenever you see highlights from that series it was unbelievable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow well he bowled and just the aggression and the fear in some of the English eyes, it was always great to watch as a bowler and see batsmen struggle, especially the Poms.\u201d The Australians have done their homework and have crafted their plans based on a file on the England batsmen, compiled by bowling coach and former England mentor David Saker.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great to have Sakesy (Saker) here. Obviously being part of the English squad for a while, it\u2019ll be great for us to pick his brain,\u201d Starc said.<\/p>\n
The pace trio, along with the batting of skipper Steve Smith and David Warner, are seen as Australia\u2019s pillars against a similarly placed England, who will look to batsmen Root and Cook and their pace attack of James Anderson and Stuart Broad.<\/p>\n
England have had a gentle run-in to the Gabba Test with three warm-up games against inexperienced teams, but their Australian coach Trevor Bayliss said they will be ready for what is thrown at them.<\/p>\n
\u201cAustralia like to hit the opposition hard early and we have been talking about going hard ourselves,\u201d Bayliss said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn Ashes Test will see our intensity rise as high as it possibly can. We are not here to make up the numbers. We are here to win. We\u2019re very confident.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shock selection of wicketkeeper Tim Paine for his first Test in seven years has split opinion around the country, with spin legend Shane Warne saying Australia are in a state of \u201cconfusion\u201d. Senior batsman Shaun Marsh has also been recalled for the eighth time.<\/p>\n
Former Test captain Ian Chappell says both sides\u2019 batting appears brittle, but Australia will start favourites to reclaim the urn based on the strength of their bowlers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brisbane, New-look Australia will bank on their pace attack terrifying England once again when two unfamiliar line-ups open hostilities for the Ashes, the oldest prize in Test cricket, in Brisbane on Thursday. Australia\u2019s surprise selections raised plenty of eyebrows but they will hope their pace trio of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10832,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10833,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10831\/revisions\/10833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}