On the Trott

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Roebuck believes English cricket might as well close down its numerous academies and replace its large collection of coaches and assorted cream-lickers and start over again. He bases his article on the latest soft option for England, Jonathan Trott.

Jonathon Trott is the fourth South African to appear this summer - an extraordinary statistic calculated to give coaches, educators and even pseudo-intellectuals pause for thought. Success has many fathers but the facts suggest that Trott's emergence was due in no small part to his background.

Meanwhile, Ryan Sidebottom's return shows that cricketing families can survive even the weakest systems.

A year ago Graham Onions could not get a start for Durham. Today he stands on the verge of swinging England towards Ashes glory, with a nation willing him on and the flattering attention from a global pop starlet to deal with. In a wildly oscillating career, this English paceman is having the time of his life, writes Jamie Pandaram in the same paper.

Allan Border doubts there is a cricket ground in the world that has more bitter-sweet memories for him than Headingley, the venue for the 2009 fourth Ashes Test. Writing in the Courier Mail, he confesses he still wakes up in cold sweats about what happened there in 1981, when Australia were so far in front and forced England to follow on, then lost. He believes the way to go for the visitors in the current series is by finding a way of getting 20 wickets.