England Fightback Proves Australia No Longer Hold The Ashes Fear Factor

If there were any doubts about England's new mental strength, particularly when playing Australia, then day four at the Gabba should have gone a long way to eliminating those doubts.

After an under-par score in their first innings, England then had to watch Australia acquire a 221-run first innings lead after Michael Hussey and Brad Haddin batted dreamily together to make England pay.

The old England script would then have read: Bat again, lose the plot, lose the Test match.

But under Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower, this is a new England attitude and it showed on day four as the Hussey and Haddin show was replicated by Srauss himself and Alastair Cook as they both his brilliant hundreds to drag England out of the mire.

Would Andrew Flintoff's side have managed that in 2006? Or Nasser Hussain's in 2002?

No chance. In fact, no England side since the succesful Mike Gatting led tour of 1986-87 would have been able to perform so well to not only salvage a possible draw but also to set up the opportunity for an unlikely win.

That is still a long way off yet but England have emphatically proved they will go toe-to-toe with Australia and the reason for that is the lack of mental scars in the England squad.
Former teams touring Down Under were full of players who had been battered by Australia in the past. Verbally abused and outclassed while on the pitch and barracked constantly by Australia's supporters when off it, England had come to dread the four-yearly trip to play the Ashes away from home.

But those days are now gone. From the disastrous 2006-07 tour, only six of England's starting XI at the Gabba played in that series and all of those players were involved when England regained the Ashes last summer at The Oval.

They see Australia as a team to beat and not as supermen like some of their predecessors have done in recent times and that approach undoubtedly helped when the pressure was turned up to maximum on day four.

Strauss said: "It was important that we got back in the Test match. We struggled hard on days two and three and everything didn't go our way so we had to come had to come back strong today and we have done that.

"We have shown that we mean business and we are not just here to make up the numbers. We want to win this series and if we want to do that then we have to play consistently."


England teams of old would have laid down for Ponting the moment Shane Warne or Glenn McGrath ran in to bowl but not any more.

Last year in the first Test at Cardiff, England's last-wicket stand of Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar helped salvage a draw and the confidence boost it gave was widely credited after the series as being crucial to England's subsequent success.

And if England can leave the Gabba with a similar result, after an equally looking hopeless situation, the in seven weeks time, England fans may well look to this Brisbane encounter as a crucial turning point and a crucial indicator that England meant business.