England face huge task

ENGLAND have just three days to come up with some answers after a crushing 277-run loss to Australia in the opening Ashes cricket Test at the Gabba yesterday.

The tourists’ grip on the famous urn has been weakened a little after Australia’s dominant performance in the first of five Tests, amassing a total of 804 runs in two declarations and bowling the tourists out twice to wrap up victory in Monday’s morning session.

Andrew Flintoff’s team head to Adelaide for Friday’s second match of the contest looking to overcome a number of problems, the most pressing being the out-of-synch bowling of pace spearhead Steve Harmison.

The giant Durham speedster opened the series with a monstrous wide delivery that skewed to second slip. He came away from the Brisbane Test with an unflattering one wicket for 177 runs.

An in-form Harmison is vital to England’s chances of holding on to the Ashes they took off Australia in last year’s unforgettable series in England.

“He’s desperate to get into this series, he’s desperate to bowl the way we know he can and he’s working towards that. Hopefully, everything will come right for him,” Flintoff said.

“I’ll sit down with (coach) Duncan Fletcher in the next few days and we’ll have a chat (about the selection) and a discussion what our tactics are once we have a look at the wicket in Adelaide,” he said.

Man-of-the-match and Australian captain Ricky Ponting said Harmison was a key player for England in the series.

“I think through the game Harmison got better, his spells late on the first day and second day were a lot better and he’s completely a rhythm bowler and if he’s a little bit out, then the radar is a little bit out,” Ponting said.

“I’m sure they will be paying a lot of attention to what he’s doing in the lead-up to Adelaide and they’ll need him at his best going forward in this series.”

Australia needed just 90 minutes on the final morning to snare the five remaining wickets to mop up victory.

There are parallels to the last series, when Australia swept to an emphatic 239-win in the first Test at Lord’s only to lose the series 2-1. But Ponting, who scored 196 in the first innings, is determined to avoid any such repeat.

“It’s up to us really to keep them under pressure,” Ponting said. “They’ll be able to bounce back if we allow them to, which is probably what happened last time around (at Lord’s in 2005).

“If we play the same way as we did in this game, good hard tough Test match cricket, then England should find it hard to dominate the next game.

“We’ll just have to have a good look at what we’ve done well in this game and make sure we continue it on in the series. You can’t afford to take the foot off the accelerator whatsoever.”

Flintoff, preferred to Andrew Strauss as Ashes tour skipper in the injury absence of 2005 series leader Michael Vaughan, said England must be proactive.

“We can’t mope around. We can’t sit around thinking too much, we’ve got to learn from it obviously. There’s still four games to go,” he said.

“We’ve been in this position before, 1-0 down in an Ashes series with four to play, and we’ve got to take the positives out of this game into Adelaide.”