Australia vs England Quotes

It's one of the greatest sporting environments you can be in, the first morning of an Ashes series. It's hard to explain, you can only really explain it when you're out there. It's awesome.

At a personal level, doing well in the Ashes and winning it was a high.

You turn up to an Ashes series and put everything you can into it.

There is something special about the early stages of an Ashes Test. There is this unique buzz.

Big wins in the first Test of an Ashes series polarise everything moving forward.

As a young kid you stay up late to watch the Ashes, getting told off for not being in bed, and dream of making a hundred against Australia.

You can tell yourself that everything is normal, and try to keep the same routine from every other Test match, but there is always something extra special about an Ashes series.

I remember my first meeting with Alastair Cook clearly. The entire Lancashire side, some of them pretty mild-mannered, really laid into him. He'd just scored a double-hundred for Essex against Australia in a warm-up match before the 2005 Ashes. For some reason, we all assumed he must be really arrogant.