IT’S shaping up to be a brilliant summer of cricket in Australia. The Ashes Tour is set to revitalise Aussie cricket after a couple of comfortable summers for the Australians on their home soil.

The English are talking themselves up to be the Golden Generation of cricketers after their 5-nil whitewash of Australia in the NatWest Series just fresh from winning the ICC World Twenty20 in the West Indies.

Andrew Strauss’s men will have extra motivation against the Aussies following their embaressing 6-1 defeat in the corresponding Ashes series last year.

So is Australia ready for such a challenge? They appear primed under the leadership of Ricky Ponting. It is as if they need a challenger in test matches because they have so often just bustled aside their opposition in recent years with relative ease.

South Africa was perhaps its biggest challenger in the past few years. The South Africans were brilliant in Australia over summer and if the English can live up to expectations, you’d expect them to make a similar match of it.

There are still many chinks in the Australian armour. Yes they have some young talented cricketers surging towards stardom, but there isn’t the amount of depth that there was when the team was at its peak in the early to mid 2000s.

Of course, they would love some of Shane Warne’s spin magic and some of Matthew Hayden’s steady centuries but they have built a new generation of cricketers that are living up to the same name.

The English appear to be following the Aussies in the way they have conquered the world. Its World Twenty20 win shows they have a lethal combination for one day matches, but the tests will be a massive test for them.

Tell us what you think. Will England provide the contest we’re hoping for in this year’s Ashes series?

Tours have endings, that is their nature. Sitting here in KL airport feels like the end of this one. It does have a poetic circuitous sense to it. A nice, fat, round return to the beginning.

In even our short time there, it was easy to see that South Africa has come a long way since the structural idiocy that was apartheid was finally dismantled. Despite the rampant crime, the blight of aids and the still cavernous gulf between the haves and the have-nots, the South Africans still seem to retain faith in the promises of the future. The contrast between the preponderance of luxury cars and the confronting signs of grinding poverty was a stark reminder that this confidence might not last forever. Many South Africans that we met spoke about the good things the ANC has done but there were also whispers of discontent that displayed the belief a single-party ruling without any real challenge, checks or balances can not be good for the democratic process. People spoke of frustration and corruption, both endemic. Much of the domestic media attention was focused on the benefits the World Cup is bringing to the people of South Africa and I don’t doubt that it is. The real test for South Africans will be to convent this short-term push into lasting benefits. Big stadiums are one thing; feeding your people and keeping them safe are something else.

The don’t-go-to-South-Africa security concerns proved totally unfounded in our experience. The people were disarmingly friendly. You could speak to anyone at any time, with football as the great unifier between people from all nations who communicated in myriad languages where they could and ornate hand gestures where they could not. The would-they-be-ready concerns were equally allayed. The landscaping at the grounds may not have been finalised but the essential infrastructure generally worked well and the stadiums were things of beauty, fitting for the warlike confrontations they held.

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