Absences make the desire grow stronger for Hussain's last stand

Ashes countdown: England's obsessively devoted captain is over the fatigue and devising a plan

As Nasser Hussain embarked on his final odyssey last week he almost dismissed the quest for the holy grail. The way he told it, the urn which contains the Ashes is a bowl of cherries hardly amounting to a hill of beans.

"It's important, but it's not the be all and end all," the England captain said. "I'm not going to give you a cliché that it's everything beating Australia. I think more important to me and some of these England players is to be in a position that you could beat Australia."

It was tempting to check at this point if there were any marines in the vicinity in case he was thinking of telling this to them. "I've been in the odd Test match, Edgbaston, Melbourne, various other places where we have beaten them but I've not been in a position against Australia where they are actually worried about losing. I want to be able to end my career and say I was playing in a series where they were in a position to lose."

Hussain craves much more, of course. He had his most wonderful moment as a player against Australia when he scored 207 against them in the First Test at Edgbaston in 1997. He smiled for a fortnight, barely able to credit it, but the result was soon submerged, a four-day wonder. Hussain has had other moments since. His average in 18 Ashes Tests is 38.67, a run higher than his overall figure, which means Australia have also had moments against him.

This winter's campaign will be his last against Australia. It may mark his last hurrah (or final boo given the nature of the beast) as the England captain. He will be 35 by the time the next English season starts and the all-consuming passion he brings to his job suggests that he cannot make the journey to the refilling well much longer without finding it empty.

No England captain has so worn his Englishness on his sleeve, or so bared his nationalistic soul in the cause, although Douglas Jardine might have run him close. The bringing home of the Ashes would complete him.

He probably dare not say so because the longer he has lived for and played the game, the greater has become Australia's pre-eminence. England have lost seven successive series since last winning in 1986-87 and in that time they have never taken it to the final match. The last time they played for the great prize in 2001 Hussain issued a tentative desire that England should compete. No more. They were destroyed by four matches to one.

Hussain arrived in Australia yesterday ahead of his team who fly later this week. It would not be beyond him, but he is not on a preparatory mission to ease their way into difficult terrain. Instead, he departed early with his expectant wife, Karen, and their son Jacob, because her condition meant she could not fly later.

In the moments when he was not attending to the needs of his family, and doubtless in some when he was, Hussain will have thought of ways that the world champions might be beaten. His conclusions, as well as his other responsibilities, will probably not have given him cause for long nights of sleep.

The parting salvoes were studiously delivered in relaxed style, but this only revealed the truth of the matter. Hussain was fooling nobody, least of all himself. He knew he had to perform a delicate balancing act, somewhere between promising that England could win on the one hand and saying how great the Australians are on the other. The alternatives to either would have made him look stupid.

England are already without their best batsman, Graham Thorpe, who has declared himself unavailable, and may be without the best fast bowler, Darren Gough, whose recovery from a knee operation is taking its time. England have become accustomed to their absences, but Hussain was not betraying signs of vulnerability when he said England needed things to go right off the field. "You've got to be careful," he conceded. "It's a game of cricket between two sides," he understated. "A lot of people can build it up and it's a fairly simple game, however much I say and the great things you talk about," he deadpanned.

But Hussain revealed the dilemma about confronting the best side to have played the game. "I'm torn. You can't go out saying the Tony Greig line [which famously said of the 1976 West Indians that he intended to make them grovel] because the Australians have earned far too much respect for any silly one-liners like that. And I don't really want to go down the line of how great Australia are because we've been there and done that. Let's just take that for granted and try to work out a way of beating them."

So devoted is Hussain to his job, to the point of obsession, that he will already have devised strategies. He looked to be over the weariness which had so obviously engulfed him on England's last assignment in the Champions' Trophy in Sri Lanka.

"Two or three weeks off, I've been thinking about Australia, thinking about our tactics," he said. "It might be my last chance of playing against them, so go out and enjoy it. Why fear anything, why say you're tired? It was a difficult summer, let's be honest, continuously trying to work out for seven Test matches on flat wickets how to get 20 wickets every time, half your bowling attack not fit, people coming in and out of the side. We were still playing bloody good cricket. It tires everyone but that's in everyone's jobs. A key this winter will be how we can manage players between games, give people a week off."

Hussain intimated that he will not be afraid to play boring cricket to win. Australia, he knows, will do the reverse, entertaining to steamroller the opposition. "They do that against anybody, because we see it everyone thinks it's England, but that's how they play their cricket. I just hope that every one of our players has put that into the brain cells, so saying, right first ball to Vaughan or Trescothick, McGrath is not going to run up with a little loosener and say 'Good morning, Micky, how was your flight over', he's going to be right into him. Same when they bat, they're going to come at us."

And Hussain will assuredly not go back at them hell for leather. England went down that road at home last year. The captain offered a hint of what can be expected. "The major thing about beating Australia is getting 20 wickets. That's going to be the key, that and the rate at which they score their runs. I don't captain as in who are we playing today, let's play this way. There's a little bit of that because Australia will come at you.

"There will be a time when you have to sit and play on the Australian arrogance almost. They want to score at five an over and show they are a fine side, maybe stopping them scoring is one way of going about it."

But to make the capture of 20 wickets possible, England will need first- innings runs. Hussain backed his batsmen. "What I'll be looking at is to score 500 at whatever rate. Get a score and as we saw this summer against India the opposition can struggle." That and much more is Hussain's desire. When he sleeps, if he sleeps again for one reason or another this winter, he will dream of the Ashes and he will see a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.