Australia are confident strike bowler Brett Lee will be fit for the third Ashes Test starting on Thursday, while Glenn McGrath is still hoping to complete a miracle recovery and play at Old Trafford.
Lee has spent two nights in hospital, on an intravenous drip and receiving antibiotics, after a graze on his left knee became inflamed. He is expected to rejoin the squad on Wednesday morning and undergo a fitness test later in the day.
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McGrath, who damaged right ankle ligaments a week ago after stepping on a cricket ball just before the start of the second Test, is recovering rapidly and has got rid of his crutches and a surgical boot used to protect the injury in the last few days.
Team physiotherapist Errol Alcott has refused to rule the player out of Old Trafford, even though McGrath initially said he was hoping to return for the fourth Test.
McGrath, man of the match in Australia's win in the first Test when he passed 500 Test wickets, remains a major doubt but Ponting would dearly like him back after the home side fought back at Edgbaston to level the five-match series.
That result, perhaps for the first time since 1989, has given England momentum as well as new-found belief. Whether that belief would survive the return of McGrath, though, is debatable.
The Old Trafford pitch, meanwhile, is as hard as a set of stepping stones, according to Lancashire chief executive Jim Cumbes, and tailor-made for England's tall quicks, even if it offers Shane Warne, one away from becoming the first man to capture 600 Test wickets, encouragement later on.
The reaction of the two teams to last week's emotion-sapping drama at Edgbaston may prove as critical as the conditions.
HELTER-SKELTER RIDE
England, needing just two wickets and with 106 runs to play with on the final morning of the second Test, looked home and dry. Ninety-nine minutes later they seemed doomed to go 2-0 down in the series; 60 seconds after that, they had won by two runs.
Vaughan likened it to a helter-skelter ride while Marcus Trescothick told the Daily Telegraph that a second defeat "would have crucified us... we felt we had aged 10 years out there".
Ponting talked of gnawed finger nails. Both sides had been put through the mangle.
Ponting, if anything, is looking for a more considered approach at Old Trafford, especially from his top-order batsmen. No player from either side has yet scored a century.
"It just seems like last two Tests have been in fast forward, it's been remarkable cricket so far," he said.
"If we can get the game into the fifth day we will be happy because it means the whole tempo would have slowed down and hopefully that means some of our guys will have batted for extended periods, which we need to do to win Test matches."
Vaughan may not want to slow things down -- his side set up their Edgbaston win by caning the Australian attack for 407 runs on the opening day -- but he will certainly hope for more runs himself.
Batting at three, he has barely contributed. Nor has the inexperienced Ian Bell, one slot lower in the order. Vaughan, who scored three hundreds and averaged more than 63 in the last Ashes, has made 32 runs in four innings to Bell's 41.
SPECIAL AFFINITY
Australia have other bowling concerns apart from Lee and McGrath. With neither Jason Gillespie nor Michael Kasprowicz at their best, the world champions could opt to play two leg spinners, Stuart MacGill supplementing Warne.
Warne has a special affinity with Old Trafford. He played his first Ashes Test at the ground, removing Mike Gatting with his first ball, although he conceded on Tuesday: "To do what I did with my first ever ball was just an absolute fluke, to be honest."
Eight years ago, he took six for 48 in the first innings at the ground to set up a big win for Australia.
MacGill, meanwhile, also likes English batsmen. In six Tests against them, he has taken 39 wickets at 24.72 apiece.
England look set to stick to the same team, although Matthew Hoggard, with only five wickets to date and struggling to swing the ball in the dry conditions, is becoming increasingly vulnerable to a challenge from uncapped seamer Chris Tremlett.
