England can pretend but hard men don't boast

Simon Barnes, writing in The Times, is less than impressed with England's new mouthy attitude. "The England cricket team are suffering from confusion. The players believe to a man that behaving like an arsehole makes you a better cricketer. The fact is that it doesn’t. It only makes you an arsehole."

One of the many great things about the Ashes series of 2005 was the respect between the players. The ultimate image of the series was Andrew Flintoff’s moment of commiseration with Brett Lee after England’s narrow win at Edgbaston in the second Test. We liked that – that’s how we want cricket played.