England CANNOT win Ashes without Kevin & Flintoff

England coach Andy Flower believes that his team CAN win the Ashes even if two star performer of his team Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen are ruled of the remaining Ashes series due to injury. Freddy is suffering from a knee injury while on the other hand KP has been struggling with an Achilles injury that he is carrying for past 3 months.

Well, we are not a fortune teller but in this case we can certainly predict that England CANNOT win Ashes without fully fit Pietersen and Flintoff.

England have just won an Ashes test match at Lords after 75 years; they are extremely high on confidence, they would be looking forward to capitalize this to a greater extent but having said that, a FACT remains a FACT. These two star performers are backbone of the England cricket team. To compete with a No. 1 team in the world, you got to have pool of talented individuals crushed with aggressiveness, and then only you can just think about challenging Australia, forget about beating them. That’s exactly what we have seen in 2005 Ashes, right?

At Lords, Ponting’s men lost because of 2 major reasons. First is what Ponting himself pointed out quite rightly – “fundamental skill errors” and the second factor is their chief tormentor, Andrew Flintoff.

As a batsman, when you see a bowler whose one knee is heavily strapped, bruised and swelled up, in spite of that he is bowling as fast as he could and making the ball climb onto you frequently, that means, you can’t withstand this hostility for too long. Sooner or later, the patience of a batsman will break down and he will give away his wicket to a bowler whose only intent is to tear apart the opposition batsmen. This is Flintoff’s charisma which he always carries along with him. And when this charismatic Flintoff gets a chance to play alongside with another captivating character Pietersen, MAN!, England team becomes a strong force that exhibits the courage and desire to bring down any team in the world. You simply cannot expect players like Collingwood, Anderson or Bopara for that matter, to win games for your country. They can just lend a supportive hand to proven match winners like Flintoff, Pietersen or Strauss.

England might have won the second test comprehensively but going by Australia’s previous track records, they will come hard on England in all the remaining tests henceforth. Australia will try to rectify those “fundamental skill errors” and will surely bounce back stronger and hungrier than before.  Players like Hussey, Clarke, Ponting and Johnson have to take some extra responsibilities if Australia wants to retain the Ashes trophy.

Keeping in mind England’s injury woes, we here at CricFire predict 2-1 victory of Australia in the Ashes 2009.