England fear exposure by excellence

Nasser rallies troops against all the odds

The time has arrived. Unfortunately for England the 2001 Ashes series was always going to come too soon and the most recent evidence suggests that it may be premature enough to culminate in an Australian landslide.

The team moulded by Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher have made surprising advances, enjoyed breathtaking victories, become a unit that no longer threatens the world supply of white flags, but nothing that has happened in the past month indicates that they are ready to succeed in the oldest cricketing challenge of all. Australia have always been overwhelming favourites to win a seventh successive series for the first time, and their odds are shortening by the hour.

Indeed, a long list of injuries threatens to disturb the fabric of England's team well before the first ball is bowled at Edgbaston on Thursday – a first ball incidentally from which it may be possible to determine the fate of the entire rubber. Serious doubts surround the fitness of the leading batsman, Graham Thorpe, who has a calf strain which is taking its time to respond to treatment and the left-arm spinner, Ashley Giles, whose chronic Achilles tendon strain is becoming more debilitating.

If the newly established number three, Michael Vaughan, plays it will be with a damaged cartilage and burst cyst on a knee which will definitely need surgery sooner or later. The best-laid plans have been shelled to pieces.

The ensuing chaos has meant a recall, another recall, for Mark Ramprakash who will almost certainly play. If it reeks of returning to the past it is not a ill-conceived choice. Ramprakash's Test batting average may be only 26 but it is 43 against Australia.

David Graveney, the chairman of selectors, announced a party of 14 but declined to name stand-ins for the other possible places – presumably because there are not that many professional cricketers, even in England. It makes an uninviting prospect a wholly forbidding one.

Hussain, a proud and fierce competitor who has ritually given eve-of-series speeches which are an amalgam of Henry V, Winston Churchill and Arthur Daley, was deliberately low-key on Friday evening in assessing the chances of the Ashes being regained.

"I'm not really interested in results against Australia," he said. Before any among his audience could suggest that he tell that to the marines, he continued: "It might sound perverse, people reading that one line will find it really odd but what I've realised is that we as a unit work for each other and everyone comes off the field and says, 'I didn't give up today'. It's a mental thing – even today [he was playing for Essex against the Aussies] you can easily slip into 'these Aussies are f...ing good'. I want my boys to slip out of that. We're good as well and we're going to keep at this."

It may not have been on the tip of his tongue but at the back of Hussain's mind will be something much different. He has had six weeks off with a broken thumb inflicted by Shoaib Akhtar – not, by his own deadly honest admission, ideal preparation for the ordeal ahead – but he will have spent much of it working out a game-plan: how to resist the Australian bowlers, how to undermine their batsmen. Results? Not matter? Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go.

Still, the England captain's rationale was understandable. There was no point in tipping a win since Australia have cut a fearsome swathe since they landed in this country a month ago. One-day or three-day, they look formidable any day. They may never need to go the full five days in a Test match. That they lost to Middlesex in their initial, warm-up match seems a sick joke now.

Their form was to be expected. You do not win the World Cup and 16 consecutive Test matches by promoting the cause of mediocrity. Indeed, their declared aim is to improve, to keep winning. Steve Waugh, who is the 40th Australian captain but appears to have been in the job forever, said the other day that defeat earlier this year in India might have done them good. It would stop them taking winning for granted. What a horrifying prospect that is for their next opponents.

Only blind patriotism allied to foolhardy optimism fuelled by crass stupidity was ever likely to make it possible to go for an England series win. The trouble is that it has now become difficult to forecast a close contest. Nothing will quite dispel the image of Hussain raising a replica of the Ashes above his head at The Oval in late August, Mike Atherton having struck the winning runs in a cameo 20 not out to follow his first innings century, but it is fading as though it (and its architect) have been in the sun too long.

It is not only that English improvement has been matched by similar Australian strides so that the gap, hard though it is to believe, is wider than it has been these past 14 years. The doubts about the structure of the home team simply will not go away and it comes back to that image of Atherton. He and five others have been on the receiving end of Australian hammerings so often that contemplating victory now takes a huge leap of faith.

Hussain, Atherton, Alec Stewart, Thorpe, Darren Gough, Andrew Caddick and Ramprakash, have all suffered ignominious failure. It is a mystery among Australian observers that they have been picked to fight another day. There are solid precedents, of course. In 1953, the Ashes had been away for 19 years and Len Hutton, Denis Compton, Godfrey Evans and Alec Bedser to name but a few had all been subjected to previous humiliation. The desire for revenge saw them through.

For all his reluctance to issue a rallying call, Hussain will want similar vengeance. In Waugh, he has the most obdurate of opponents. Waugh, too, stopped well short of arrogance in discussing the series last week. He conceded that Australia definitely had an an advantage over the players who represented England in the one-day series and he promised a riproaring series.

"For the last 18 months Test cricket has been outstanding. It's at a peak now and I don't think there have been better matches played," he said. He was including England, but he knows that Australia play it differently from everybody else. They attack and they never stop attacking.

If their top three batsmen are vulnerable their middle order is astonishingly adept. Their bowling is awe-inspiring. England have won recently by digging deep and defending. They will have to play a different game. Hussain's return will help but they will do well to survive. They will do well to avoid losing 4-1. The time has arrived and England may be starting a long walk to the gallows.