Buoyant Swann awaits Ashes challenge

With four days to go until the start of the 2010-11 Ashes Graeme Swann has admitted he is climbing the walls in anticipation of the biggest match of his life, but believes that he and his team-mates will be able to channel all of their nervous energy into the daunting task of bearding the Aussies in their very own lair at the Gabba on Thursday.

"When we first got over here I daren't think of the first Test match, because I was like a kid on December 1, with an Advent calendar. I couldn't wait for the 25th to come along," said Swann. "It's really building now, less than a week to go, and I go back to my room at night and I smile like a lunatic and bounce off the walls. It's going to be amazing come Thursday - I just can't wait."

Swann's chirpy demeanour has been a key feature of his cricket ever since he burst back onto the international scene in 2007, and while his left-field humour and subtle disdain for convention has rubbed people up the wrong way in the past - not least the former England coach Duncan Fletcher - the current regime recognises his unquenchable optimism as an asset to be cherished every bit as much as his match-winning spin bowling.

To that end, while Australia's preparations centre around a spinner of their own - the left-arm debutant, Xavier Doherty, who is set to become their ninth specialist slow bowler since the retirement of Shane Warne four years ago - England's main man is so comfortable with his form and role in the side that he has been passing the time by promoting a new dance craze that has been spreading through the dressing-room.

Known as "the Sprinkler", the dance involves moving an outstretched arm in the juddering motion of a garden sprinkler, with the other one tucked behind the head. It was first raised as a possible wicket celebration during England's second warm-up game against South Australia at Adelaide, but it was given its first public airing during Swann's weekly podcast on ECB TV, with several of the squad - most notably Tim Bresnan - strutting their stuff for the camera.

"If someone's stupid enough to give me a camera and let me have free rein with it, I'm going to do stuff like that," said Swann, although there is a serious subtext to such frivolity, as he himself noted. "There's a very good vibe in the camp," he added. "For me, it did show what a good spirit there was - because it wasn't hard to get anyone to do it. I know three or four years ago I might have tried that and got a couple of punches or got my head ripped off."

Even the Aussie media are finding it hard to frown on such antics. "Buoyant Poms start victory dance a little too early," was how the Sun-Herald responded, and while it doubted that England would dare to unveil the dance on the field until the Ashes had been won and lost, it added: "It is refreshing to see a side having fun before such a pressurised series."

England's current demeanour is a marked contrast both with the anxieties in the Australia camp at present, and perhaps more pertinently, those that dogged England's own campaign four years ago, when they entered the Brisbane Test with doubts in every department, and were duly put to the sword from the moment that Steve Harmison bowled his infamous first-ball wide to second slip. The team bus, noted England's then-spinner Ashley Giles, was as quiet as a morgue on that occasion. It's hard to imagine a similar scenario this time around.

Australia's record in Brisbane is nevertheless formidable, with 16 victories in their last 21 matches dating back to 1988-89, and not a single defeat - a run of results that neatly encapsulates their two-decade march to the summit of world cricket. With that golden era now fading from view, however, England genuinely believe that they are the side who can capture the citadel and confirm the end of an era.

"I think the team see Brisbane as a really big challenge and whenever we've come across these challenges, like not having won at Lord's for 70-odd years, the guys really like facing things like that," said Paul Collingwood. "Brisbane is one of them. It is difficult for teams to win there, Australia have been incredibly strong there, but that just makes it more exciting for us and we'd love to make history."

So far, England have hardly put a foot wrong in their preparation, recording handsome wins in two of their three warm-ups while securing invaluable batting practice at Adelaide. The decision to send Swann and his frontline bowling colleagues for early acclimatisation in Brisbane - where they practised with the academy squad and bonded as a quartet under the tutelage of their Aussie bowling coach David Saker - will be best judged in hindsight, but in their absence, England's back-up bowlers still administered a ten-wicket defeat over Australia A.

"We've played some excellent cricket over the last three or four weeks," said Swann."The acclimatisation couldn't have gone better really. I think it just showed the strength and the depth of our squad that we could give Australia A such a good beating the other day."

On Sunday afternoon, however, the squad was reunited at the team hotel in central Brisbane, and from here on in, every man's focus will shift to Thursday morning, as the crowds begin to gather around the Gabba and Ashes fever takes hold of the city. "It's inevitable," said Swann. "The intensity is going to be hyped up - the cameras in your face, the people in the street. Any player would be lying if he said you can't feel it."