Freddie goes to Pakistan

To judge from their eager demolition of the World XI last week, the Australians have recovered from their Ashes hangovers and are ready to reassert themselves as the leading team in the world. The challenge has been laid down to their vanquishers. Six weeks on from the biggest party of their lives, England's newly anointed heroes are preparing to leave the celebrity circuit well behind, and get back to the day job.

For the likes of Kevin Pietersen and his A-list acquaintances, could there be any more austere comedown than a trip to Pakistan? This is a land whose legend precedes it - a mysterious other-world where booze is available only to those who sign a form declaring their alcoholism, and where a certain five-star hotel asks, in the politest manner possible, that all automatic weapons be handed in at reception. Never mind a spell of detoxing at The Priory - if Kate Moss was a cricketer, she'd have no trouble keeping her feet on the ground.

Though they would do well to hide their contentment from their thirsty charges, England's management could hardly have wished for a more perfect challenge to refocus a few minds after the euphoria of the Ashes. There was a time, not so long ago, when English itineraries seemed to conspire against momentum - one bad series against the Aussies was usually enough to send the planners back to the drawing-board. Now, with that considerable monkey off their backs, the opposite is true. It's unlikely to be a glamorous trip, but the one-for-all ethos that sustained the Ashes campaign can only be strengthened in such an alien environment.

It is almost five years to the day since England embarked on their last tour of Pakistan, and it is sobering to reflect how much the squad has changed in that time. Only five of the 16 Test players featured in the previous trip: Ashley Giles and Marcus Trescothick, who had four caps between them before that tour began but played significant parts in a memorable series win; Michael Vaughan, who was kept on the sidelines by an out-of-form Graeme Hick, and Andrew Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard, who had their moments in the one-day and warm-up games, but whose greatest contributions came as auxiliary sight-screen shifters in the frenetic finale to England's twilight run-chase at Karachi.

For Flintoff, the contrast between then and now will be especially stark. He was still feeling his way back into the fold when he clubbed a memorable 84 from 60 balls, also at Karachi, to whip the opening one-day international from under Pakistan's nose, but that was the pinnacle of his performances. He had only just been recalled to the country, as a reinforcement for the Test squad, when he edged a bouncer into his face in the Rawalpindi nets and was reduced to a spectator for the remainder of the trip.

Flintoff pleaded just last week for a return to anonymity after his stellar summer, and while that might be pushing things a touch in such a cricket-mad continent, Pakistan does at least offer a gentler form of fan adoration than its brasher neighbour, India. The Lahore-Multan-Faisalabad triangle, in which 80% of England's cricket will be played, has none of the cut-and-thrust of Karachi, the port city to the south which has been deemed such a security risk post September 11, nor the cutting edge of Peshawar to the north, where Andrew Caddick caused a stir on the 2000-01 trip by swearing at an umpire, and from which England enjoyed one of the highlights of the tour, a trip into the legendary Khyber Pass. Given its proximity to Afghanistan, and everything that has come to pass in the intervening half-a-decade, it is a day-trip that no other England team can expect to undertake for several years to come.

Times have moved on since the tours of the mid-1980s, when England's tourists were housed in a disused biscuit factory, and in Lahore especially - the country's spiritual capital - they can expect nothing but the best accommodation on offer. It is just as well, because in this era of heightened security, nightlife will be a commodity in short supply. On the corresponding tour in 2000-01, Vaughan and Giles bonded over a tour-long computer-game rivalry, leading Nasser Hussain to coin the mock-disparaging term "The PlayStation Generation" to describe the team of youngsters he had been given the task of moulding into battle-hardened veterans.

That generation has grown up now, as no-one who witnessed this summer's euphoric scenes can doubt. But such is the metabolism of the modern-day cricketer that already the seeds of the next generation are being sown. Shaun Udal is the county stalwart who has earned a last hurrah, but for Matt Prior, Alex Loudon and Liam Plunkett, the journey is only just beginning. Rookies one and all, it is their duty to buy into the matchless team ethic that has carried England to new heights this year, but equally, it is England's duty to welcome them on board, just as they have done with each newcomer to the squad since Vaughan's revolution was set in motion in Bangladesh two winters ago.

The 2005 Ashes is a badge of honour that the first XI will wear for the rest of their lives, but in the self-perpetuating world of sport, the end of one chapter is invariably the beginning of the next. And, as if the squad needed any further encouragement to embrace the experience for better or worse, they need only take stock of the horrific aftermath of the recent Kashmir earthquake. Sport delights precisely because it is escapism on a massive scale. England may feel impotent to heal Pakistan's wounds of the past fortnight, but if they go about their business with the same joie de vivre that they showed all summer, their hosts will have no choice but to smile along all the same.