Ponting calls 5-0 Ashes win 'absolutely possible'

Ricky Ponting believes it is "absolutely possible" that Australia can trounce England with a 5-0 Ashes clean-sweep this summer. Although Ponting didn't quite match Glenn McGrath's 5-0 prediction from four years ago - which turned out to be correct - he was confident that Australia had learnt from their mistakes and such an outcome was "all in our hands".

The Australians gave up the urn in England last year with a 2-1 defeat and while they have performed strongly since then, a 1-1 draw against Pakistan last month raised a few questions. The Headingley loss was Australia's first Test defeat since the Ashes, and back home they won't have as much reason to fear the swinging ball.

By the first Test at the Gabba, Australia should have regained their No. 1 wicketkeeper Brad Haddin and the offspinner Nathan Hauritz, while they hope Peter Siddle will also be available after battling back stress fractures. Ponting met Cricket Australia officials in Melbourne on Monday to plan for the Ashes and said there was no reason to rule out a 5-0 win.

"It's absolutely possible," Ponting told reporters. "There's no reason why not. It's all in our hands. It's how well we play and how well we take charge of different situations. We've learnt from a lot of the mistakes that we've made. There's no doubt we made some mistakes in the last Ashes series in England that probably at the end of the day cost us the series.

"We know now that we're a more experienced and probably a better team now than we were then. We put that together plus we're playing in our conditions, we hope to win this series and win it well. Batting collapses probably were the reason we lost the series last time around and our inability to bowl them out on the last day in Cardiff. I've got confidence in the squad of players that we've got that they are going to be good enough to win an Ashes series."

Following Australia's 1-1 series with Pakistan, England have started their series against the same opponents with two powerful victories, winning inside four days at both Trent Bridge and Edgbaston. They play two more Tests against Pakistan, their only five-day outings before the Ashes, while Australia will fine-tune their preparations with two Tests in India in October.

"[James] Anderson and [Stuart] Broad and those guys have really stepped up," Ponting said of England." They are coming together well as a team. We have to make sure at the end of the Indian tour that we have got everything in place to make sure that we're ultra-competitive against them.

"They [England] certainly have bowled well and they've had great conditions to bowl in as well, the English. We'll have a different set of conditions and a different ball when they come out here and I'm sure our guys will equip themselves really well. We know where we have to bowl to all of their batsmen. They've got no one there who's going to surprise us at all."

Jonathan Trott, the England batsman who scored a century on debut at The Oval last August, offered a wry response to Ponting's assessment. "I've only played one game against them, and they wanted to win that game but it turned out pretty good for us," he said. "That's all I can say, I don't know the guy and his character, but I'd find if I'd said something like that I'd have put more pressure on myself and the team, more than if I go about my business the way I know."