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It's odd how your memory plays tricks on you. Back in 1970 you couldn't sit up all night to watch the Ashes live on TV because it wasn't shown. We'd barely got colour then, never mind satellites. But I did devour every word that was written from Down Under during that winter, and I clearly recall Ray Illingworth being one of the key figures, not only as a captain but a bowler.

In fact, I was lucky enough to be asked to ghost a coaching book for him a few years later, and sat enthralled in his Pudsey home learning the secrets of the man I thought had spun the Aussies into defeat across an epic seven Test series.

Look at the record books this morning and I'm so wrong. Four of England's bowlers took more than the 10 wickets he collected, and quite clearly off spin wasn't the way to get people out in Australian conditions. That set me wondering whether Graeme Swann really will be the key player for Andrew Strauss's team this time. He's 2.44 favourite to be England's top wicket taker, so is that one to lay? After all, not only Illingworth failed to get wickets, but there haven't been too many off spinners since who succeeded on Australian wickets. Even John Emburey, who took five for 80 to win the Brisbane Test in the 1986-7 triumph, got carted around for much of the rest of the tour.

However, it could be different for Swann. He's all over the papers this morning after taking four second innings wickets in the first warm-up match in Perth to put down a marker. And there's something else which will be on his side - the agreement that the Decision Review System will operate during the Ashes.

Back in 1970 England didn't get a single LBW decision in their favour, and of Emburey's 18 wickets on Mike Gatting's triumphant tour (he took seven in the final Test when the series was already won), just three of them were leg before. Swann, in contrast, gets a lot of his victims that way and the technology which proves a ball would have turned onto the stumps has helped him and will continue to do so in Australia. Lazy left-handed batsman can't just plant a pad down the pitch and kick it away any more. "I'm very happy it is around," he says. "The first five years I bowled I used to wax lyrical about how unfair it was for spinners who could not get lbws. Now I'm being proved right."

An in-form Swann will only add to Australia's problems, which seem to be growing. Ricky Ponting has decided to turn out for Tasmania for the first time in three years in an attempt to rediscover some form - while Simon Katich and Doug Bollinger have both failed to recover from injuries in time to play for New South Wales against Victoria today. Katich, who broke a thumb on the tour to India, has set himself a deadline to play for New South Wales in a Sheffield Shield match next week as his last chance of being fit for the first Test.

The Aussies are still odds on at 1.8810/11 to regain the Ashes, but there's nothing on their side at the moment, not even the technology! So I'm laying Ponting's men for the series, and backing Swann to succeed where Illingworth and virtually every other off spinner has failed!


Five things you might not know about Simon Katich

1. Born in Middle Swan, Western Australia, in August 1975, his dad was a homicide detective in Perth. His grandparents moved Down Under from Croatia in the 1920s.

2. A childhood bout of glandular fever left him with no sense of smell.

3. In 1999 on his first full Australian tour to Sri Lanka, Katich contracted chicken pox and a viral infection. He was confined to his Colombo hotel room for two weeks.

4. Encouraged to cook as a boy by his mother, he made it to the semifinals in the Oz version of Celebrity Master Chef - his signature dish was crispy salmon with wilted spinach and mashed potatoes.

5. He's hot tempered. Last February he had to be pulled apart from Michael Clarke after grabbing the vice captain by the throat in a row because Clarke wanted to cut short celebrations of a win over South Africa to be with his girlfriend.


By Ralph Ellis

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