The Ashes will be won by the team which better turns confidence into performance

To argue that Australia start as favourites to win the 2006/07 series is fair comment - but to try and rewrite history and argue that the Poms were somehow lucky last time around is not. England outplayed, outthought and outpsyched Australia in 2005 - and it is the last of these that most riles the Aussies - and provides hope for England again this time.

Aussie mind games

Glenn McGrath is a big man, just five centimetres short of a full two metres high, and with a mouth to match his stature. In 2005 he confidently predicted that Australia would win the series 5-0 and now he is making the same prediction again for the new series. This is all part of the somewhat transparent Aussie plan to unsettle the England players and instil dents in their confidence - a plan fully supported by their rabid media. The rather more diplomatic Australian Prime Minister John Howard sees it differently: "As much as I and all Australian cricket lovers would like to see a 5-0 victory to Australia, it would be of no surprise to see the destiny of the Ashes in the balance as we enter the new year for the fifth Test in Sydney" he said last week. Well soon these verbal skirmishes will finish and the real battle will begin - and England will do well to remember a few things from 2005 that should help give them the confidence they need.

It was the Aussies who blinked first in 2005

At tea in the First Test match at Lord's in 2005 England had bowled out Australia for 190 and were 10 without loss in their first innings - even the honourable members in the Long Room were cheering. But by close of play England had effectively lost the match as their innings fell apart to 92 for 7 - they were never to recover and Australia won the match comfortably prompting Ricky Ponting to endorse Glenn McGrath's 5-0 series win prediction. The momentum was with Australia, but it was the Aussies who blinked in the next match at Edgbaston when, without the injured McGrath, they conceded 407 runs in a day's play as England took the fight to them. It was destructive and ego-deflating batting at over 5 runs per over and it was the platform from which England launched their fightback in the series and, whilst there were a few heart-stopping moments along the way, they never looked back. It was Lord's, in retrospect, which was the aberration.

Temperament and team work, not technique, are the key to success

The one thing that above all the 2005 series showed is that in Ashes contests it is temperament and confidence and team work that wins the day rather than (just) technique. When the Australian coach took his players into the Queensland bush in August he was trying to build the Aussies as a unit so that they would bond together more effectively as a team. He wasn't working on their cricketing techniques (which he could take for granted - they are all fine players) but trying to create a special "mateship" between them. "Mateship" is a concept that the Australians are keen to claim as their own invention - it describes the natural bonding that is seen to exist within "Ocker" groups and which has its own distinctive confidence boosting expressions like "No Worries mate". It is curious that Buchanan thought that is was necessary to try an build this mateship in the Aussie squad - most of these individuals had been playing together for around ten years - if they weren't good enough mates now how could they ever be?

England bond together naturally under Flintoff's leadership

There is no need for contrived bonding sessions in the England squad - the core of the successful 2005 team remains and although Trescothick and Vaughan from the 2005 Oval Test side will be missing the other nine players from that team will probably line up at Brisbane. The young Alastair Cook will join them and he has already scored three Test centuries in nine matches, averaging 55, and has the temperament to do well. In captain Flintoff the England players have a leader they would walk across broken glass in the outback to support if they had to - and without needing to be told how to do so by their coach! England must take the fight to the Australians and rattle their confidence - because that is what succeeded last time around. But show caution or diffidence and the Australians will exploit it - as individuals if not as a naturally bonding group of mates!