Taking the Sting with the Ring

You strut into a home Test series as skipper of the overwhelming favourites to win the series.

You start your 1st day on that note but then ...

Your opponents shock you with a fighting display least expected of them. They make you slog over a drawn opening match. It is a moral victory for them, assuming any such victories exist.

You come back strongly and win the 2nd convincingly. Everybody expects you to hammer the final nail in the coffin but...

Again your opponents refuse to get blown away. They hang in there till the last act and turn the tables on you to secure a shock series levelling win in the 3rd and final test.

How do you feel? And what about your opponents....how do they feel?

Ask poor Freddie Flintoff, if you must. In two successive series he has played like the champion cricketer he is but had the strange fortune of enacting one role in his last test series and the other in the very next.

It takes no expert to predict that Ashes 2006 are going to be an uphill task hereon. But Freddie and his bunch are not going to look away from the hard work facing them and doubters can still rest assured of a smashing match up Down under in less than half a year from now.