They don't hold all those World Cups for nothing he said

They don't hold all those World Cups for nothing," he said.Graham Gooch, who launched his Test career with a pair at Edgbaston against the Aussies in 1975, also speaks of a culture clash. "Those two Tests I played in '75 were a real eye-opener," he said. "Their fierce, competitive nature was unlike anything I'd encountered. It wasn't just cricket and you could tell there was a long history of needle there.

It was like England and Scotland at football."On the field there is an extra dimension to Ashes games which only the West Indies sides of the Eighties came close to matching. During my Test career I played five Tests against Australia, losing two, drawing two and winning one – the sole victory coming in the fourth Test in Melbourne during the 1982-83 tour, when we squeezed home by three runs.It was there that I saw what the Ashes meant to Australians at large when 20,000 turned up to watch the final day. With Australia's last pair needing 37 runs for victory it might have lasted one ball, but the Ashes were at stake and people wanted to be there.That they got within one decent hit of regaining them (something they eventually did by drawing the final Test at Sydney), played havoc with my emotions. In the space of 50 minutes, growing confidence had turned to utter despair, before the ecstasy rush that came with Botham's fluky dismissal of Jeff Thomson, caught off a rebound by Geoff Miller at first slip.People talk of time being slowed down and I remember the edge hanging in the air for what seemed an age before "Dusty" [Miller] stooped to conquer. Botham, living up to his claim that there is no better feeling than beating the Aussies in their own backyard, made a rhino charge towards the dressing-room with a team of jumping jack flashes in pursuit.Left to my own thoughts for a moment I then did something utterly ridiculous. I turned to the home crowd in the infamous Bay 13 area and gave them a protracted V-sign to make up for the incessant abuse we'd suffered over the previous four days.Although Steve Waugh was right to make a fuss over the beer can thrown at Lord's recently, back then, the denizens of Bay 13 lobbed anything that came to hand, none of them compliments. A rendezvous for bikers, the ammunition was mainly bolts and washers.

Oh, and as one fielder found out when he picked the remnants out of his hair, meat pies.Despite my first taste of this unique contest coming a month earlier in Perth, the full-frontal assault of an Ashes campaign Down Under had only just hit home, hence my puerile reaction. After all, I was fresh out of university where cricket was run with amateur charm on salad-only lunches and I was simply not used to propaganda on this scale.As Keith Fletcher recalled on England's 1974-75 tour, a series that matched the physical savagery of the Bodyline trip 42 years earlier, you did not just play the team. "It was you versus the country, the press, and the flies," said Fletcher "When they play at home, objectivity doesn't come into it You're crap and they're great. End of story."Today that fervour is maintained by the media, who with TV ratings to earn and papers to sell, hype it to the limit. Australia will begin the series as clear favourites and are expected to win, but they are not infallible.To stand any chance of creating an upset England will have to be able to hit back after defeat.

Even with the Ashes at stake, this Australian side do not do caution, and only rain will bring the draws that most sides need in order to fight another day.. Even when the game is a gentle Sunday friendly in a charitable cause, there is something about England against Australia that stirs the competitive juices. At Trent Bridge yesterday, two teams of mainly fortysomethings stretched a few redundant muscles in aid of the Nottingham Test ground's Pavilion Appeal. There was much banter and some moments of mirth, notably when Derek Randall and Bruce French took a wicket apiece at the death – but behind the smiles there was still a desire to win and probably only a little less intensely felt than it will be when the fight for the Ashes begins for real at Edgbaston on Thursday. Even when the game is a gentle Sunday friendly in a charitable cause, there is something about England against Australia that stirs the competitive juices. At Trent Bridge yesterday, two teams of mainly fortysomethings stretched a few redundant muscles in aid of the Nottingham Test ground's Pavilion Appeal. There was much banter and some moments of mirth, notably when Derek Randall and Bruce French took a wicket apiece at the death – but behind the smiles there was still a desire to win and probably only a little less intensely felt than it will be when the fight for the Ashes begins for real at Edgbaston on Thursday. Then again, given the pedigree of yesterday's line-ups, it would have been ludicrous to suppose that such instincts would lie dormant.