The Ashes

And so the team to tour Australia and attempt to retain the ashes has been announed.

Trescothick, Strauss, Cook, Bell, Pieterson, Collingwood, Jones, Read, Flintoff, Hoggard, Harmisson, Plunkett, Mahmood, Anderson, Giles and Panesar.

There are few shocks but there are echoes of Nasser Hussain's squad with the number of players recovering from injury.

I remain unconviced.

To my mind England have played with a plan. That is to bat deep and to be hard to beat. I suspect that, all things being equal, Duncan Fletcher would want the 11 players who played last season (with a choice between Bell and Collingwood). All things are not equal. Vaughan and Simon Jones are injured, Gerreint Jones horribly out of form with the bat and Ashley Giles has not played for a year and Monty Panesar has been in superb form. There is also the Trescothick issue, will he turn up?

England want to play 5 bowlers. This has been possible because we have a genuine all-rounder in Flintoff, a wicket keeper who used to score runs at 7 and a spinner who was capable of contributing in Giles. Jones has been dropped, apparently because his form with the bat has been so abysmal. So what do they do? They bring in Read, a fine keeper but a no 8 at test level, he did well against a weakened Pakistan attack but he will not score 100's against the Aussies. They took Prior to the sub-continent as he was a like for like swap with Jones. If he was the right deputy for India then he should have replaced Jones. But that is history. It still though has an impact on the team that walks out for the first test.

The choice between Panesar and Giles is difficult. Giles will add depth to the batting whereas Panesar will offer more penetration with the ball. A tail of Read, Giles, Mahmood, Hoggard and Harmisson looks better than Read, Mahmood, Hoggard, Harmisson and Panesar. Can anyone see that tail against the Aussies? Without a genuine no 7 we either drop a very talented bowler or go for 6 batsman and Flintoff.

The later has some merit. The risk is that it puts a heck of a workload on Flintoff but if he's picked he must be fit.

Given the options I'd go for Trescothick, Strauss, Cook, Bell, Pieterson, Collingwood, Flintoff, Read, Hoggard, Harmisson and Panesar.

That said it won't happen, there are no cover batsman in the party and 3 additional quicks so the decision seems to have been made to go with 5 bowlers from the start.

A likely 11 is Trescothick, Strauss, Cook, Bell/Collingwood, Pieterson, Flintoff, Read, Giles, Mahmood/Plunkett, Hoggard, and Harmisson.

Will Fletcher do his West Indies trick and ignore the other selectors and bring back Jones? Unless he suddenly scores a heap of runs I don't see how.

We've started on the back foot folks.

Ah you say what would your 16 have been. Trescothick, Strauss, Cook, Bell, Pieterson, Collingwood, Shah (he did well on his emergency call up last winter), Jones, Prior, Flintoff, Hoggard, Harmisson, Mahmood, Anderson, Giles and Panesar.

I might have then gone for an 11 of Trescothick, Strauss, Cook, Bell, Pieterson, Flintoff, Prior, Mahmood, Hoggard, Harmisson and Panesar