I like my colleague Chris. His Ashes piece the other day was a reasoned article, well balanced and a good read. He's dead wrong though. England won't win the Ashes and here are five reasons why not.
1. It's all going far too well
England have gone about things calmly, professionally, almost to the point of ruthlessly. They've had good plans throughout, have won all their tour matches in convincing style and even the back-up bowlers are hitting their lengths, getting movement through the air and off some fairly lifeless pitches. Meanwhile, Australia have been scratching around playing some appalling cricket and their Test players sent back to play state cricket have been pisspoor at best.
It simply can't last. I was hoping Australia A might force a reality sandwich down the throats of England fans, players, staff and media, but it hasn't happened. We're being set up for a massive fall and when James Anderson's first ball at Adelaide sails over second slip's head and away for four byes, I'll be the one to say "I told you so".
2. Too many options
We all thought we knew England's starting XI. The batsmen pick themselves and the bowling unit looks settled. Or at least it did right up until the Australia A game where Chris Tremlett, Tim Bresnan and even Monty Panesar all bowled really well. The pick of the bowlers there was Ajmal Shahzad who isn't even in the official Ashes touring party. He's in the performance squad, but has suddenly put his name up for serious consideration for Brisbane. The temptation to tinker with something that works may prove too strong.
3. Lack of alternatives
By contrast to the bowlers, the batting looks strangely thin. Watching Alastair Cook over the last 12 months has been so awful that showing his technique to terrorism suspects in order to extract confessions has been barred on grounds that it's simply too cruel (Simon Katich was going to be used by the USA until Dick Cheney decided it was going way too far over the line). If he fails, there is no other option at the top of the order. So convinced in their selection over the last few months, England have taken just the two openers with them. That move could be exposed if Australia get into Cook early on.
4. Australia simply aren't that bad
They've not been great - that much is obvious - but one glance at the Test records of the Australian side is enough to show what they can do. Ricky Ponting is undoubtedly one of the all-time greats and they've a battery of seamers who bowl at a seriously rapid pace. Moreover, they use the Kookaburra ball week in, week out as opposed to the Duke which Anderson and co were hooping around the bemusement of Bangladesh and Pakistan through the summer. Cricket Australia has also managed to pull off the impossible - convince everyone that Shane Watson is a Test opener. And if they can do that, anything is possible.
5. It'd just be bloody typical
Even people who only started watching cricket on the back of the 2005 Ashes know enough about English cricket to understand that dizzying highs are inevitably followed by spirit-crushing, soul-destroying lows. The comedown from an English Test series win is far worse than you'll find from any class A narcotic. The last big one was the 2006/7 Ashes and some people are still rocking themselves to sleep, bathed in cold sweat at the thought of Steve Harmison's first ball. It's not just the big tickets either - it works in microcosm. For every Michael Vaughan swivel-pull for yet another graceful boundary, there's Shane Warne's ball to Michael Gatting. You say Botham launching it into the Headingley confectionery stall, I say Peter Taylor (who?) taking six-for.
It would be typical of England to muck this up every bit as much as it'd be typical of Australia to shrug off their recent woes and deliver yet more pain to the long-suffering England fans. It's happened too bloody often.
Obviously I hope I'm wrong, but unlike the rest of you, I'm not turning my expectations up to eleven. Therefore I'll take more joy in victory and less pain from defeat.
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