Australia ready to land the knockout punch

Like a boxer who is twice put on the canvas with a resounding thud but still gets up to face more punishment, England are looking groggy and the knockout punch could come at any time.

The next round in their contest against Australia starts on Thursday at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, where Steve Waugh's team may land the decisive blow.

Going into the third of the five Tests leading 2-0, another victory would ensure Australia return home with an unprecedented seventh successive Ashes series triumph.

Their sequence of six in a row began in 1989, the year that Waugh made his own first tour of England, and as a cricketer who has a keen sense of the game's history, he would take immense pride in leading his side into the record books.

With 18 victories in their last 20 tests, Australia not only have the confidence that comes with the winning habit but they boast a formidable fast bowling armoury, the best leg-spinner in the world and batsmen who score rapidly enough to give their bowlers ample time to take 20 wickets.

These are the essential reasons why Waugh's side are the current heavyweights of the world game who have won the first two Ashes Tests in little more than three days and now have their sights on a third consecutive success.

Virtually everyone in the side has contributed at some stage with runs, wickets or catches, and the only two players yet to make a significant mark in their specialist roles are batsmen Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting.

Opener Hayden has scores of 35, 0 and 6 not out from the first two Tests while Ponting has been unable to reproduce the dazzling batting that illuminated the triangular one-day series against England and Pakistan earlier this month.

INJURY PROBLEMS

Ponting has disappointed with 11, 14 and 4 but, following his meagre tally of 17 runs in five innings in the Test series in India last March, England will be aware that a big Test score from the talented Tasmanian is overdue.

Australia's form and fortunes contrast sharply with those of England, whose mounting injury problems mean they go to Trent Bridge without their captain Nasser Hussain, their best batsman Graham Thorpe, and the man who fills the key number three role in the order, Michael Vaughan.

Michael Atherton, who stood in as captain in the previous test at Lord's, will do the job again because the broken little left finger Hussain suffered in the opening match of the series at Edgbaston has not healed.

Atherton has a squad to which the selectors have recalled Surrey fast bowler Alex Tudor and Glamorgan off-spinner Robert Croft.

Croft was in the party for the first Test at Edgbaston but did not play in a match which England lost by an innings and 118 runs, and was then overlooked for the Lord's Test in which the home team went down by eight wickets.

Australia know something about Tudor, who played the first two of his three tests in the 1998-99 Ashes series when he had a match haul of five wickets on his debut in Perth.

Injuries have subsequently hindered his progress and his last test appearance was against New Zealand two years ago when he hit an unbeaten 99 as a nightwatchman.

Tudor's batting ability would certainly have counted in his favour as England seek to stem the collapses that compounded their problems in the first two Tests.

At Edgbaston, England's last seven second innings wickets tumbled for 22 and at Lord's they lost the last seven for 66 in their first innings and the last six for 39 in the second innings.

Mail Cricket Editor