England will `logically` win winter Ashes `comfortably`, says Oz columnist

Sydney: England will win the forthcoming Ashes series comfortably by any logical assessment, while Australia`s once all-conquering team is staring at another Ashes loss, according to an Australian columnist.

Journalist Tim Lane mentioned in his column in the Sydney Morning Herald that the reason is that England won in Australia three years ago by a 3-1 margin with a team not substantially different from the current squad, while the current hosts` squad lacks a couple of lynchpins from that time, namely Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey. According to the columnist, Chris Rogers, David Warner and George Bailey have played 28 Test matches and scored 1707 runs collectively while Simon Katich alone played twice that number of Tests and Ponting and Hussey aggregated almost 350, adding the retired trio collectively compiled the best part of 24,000 runs. Stating that the positivity of the Argus report was exposed as no more than blind optimism, the report also mentioned that recent past and present players of Australia have been at each others` throats, adding that Cricket Australia (CA) seems to give more precedence to Twenty20 lucre than the pursuit of Test match success. The report also said that cricket in Australia appears to be fractured and are not showing any immediate signs of rising, adding that figures state that Australia has not produced a world-class batsman since captain Michael Clarke`s entry nine years ago, which is a bad sign for the team`s Ashes prospects.