Ashes is always unpredictable. In most of the case, either Australia or England take the lead with no chance for the opponent. This time I'm expecting Ashes to win by Australia. Australia has better test format player than England.

After winning the world cup match most of the people will predict England will surely the Ashes series because of the strong batting line up. We should also consider test matches are completely different format compared to one day. So it is impossible to predict because in this format Ausis are very strong.

England has benefit of playing in home ground but their batting will not be much good in test format. Australia has great team. Nothing is predictable, by the way. I think Australia will win this time.

Ireland would not rank among the top 15 teams in cricket (if all of them had test status), and bowling them out for 38 can't be taken as a measurement for the ferocity of the English attack. You should not forget the fact that the English bowlers conceded 200 plus during the first innings. I am still mad at England for robbing the world cup from a more deserving team. I just hope that the Aussies will teach them a lesson and show how to play ethically.

I think it will be a close series and even though I am Australian and want to see Australia retain the Ashes, I think that England will win the Ashes once again. In recent Ashes series it has been the home team that comes out on top so I'm expecting that to happen again in this series and if England do win the series they will make it all square on 33 Ashes series wins for both teams. The trio from the sandpaper incident have been named for the Australia team but time will tell if they all play together, I'm sure Warner and Smith come straight back in but not sure about Cameron Bancroft as they might want Finch to open with Warner. It will be interesting to see which team the selectors pick for the first test match.

I am equally mad with the bullshit result of the World Cup, but the blame should fall completely on ICC and the umpires since England were basically handed the trophy at the end of the day.

Also, ethics is clearly not the strong point of the Aussies as we have seen over the years, but I just wanted to explain how the current England lineup can perform even under intense pressure even if its against a team like Ireland.

Feel so sad for the Ireland who would have never imagined that they would fail so miserably after their confidence on cloud nine by taking huge lead in 1st innings. England not only won the match but also crushed their confidence badly that resulted in all out for just score of 38.

The problem the Australian selectors have is that Warner and Finch both have the same game style which doesn't really suite test match cricket. For ODI and T20 its a perfect combination but for test match cricket I think one has to miss out and that will most likely be Finch. It then leaves Bancroft and Khawaja as the other opener, Khawaja has been in good form and played pretty well in previous test matches so I think he gets the spot ahead of Bancroft for the first test match. If things don't go to well then we could see some changes for the second test but I think the openers will be Warner and  Khawaja.

I was wondering what is wrong with Bangladesh as they are not even making a fighting chance in both the concluded matches and now i understood that they are playing in Srilanka and the teams that play in their own back ground perform better than the tourists, but before the series i thought Bangladesh will give a better performance considering their performance in the world cup, but Srilanka outperformed in every department in both the matches.

It is a battle for supremacy. Sri Lanka were the world champions once, but their standards have come down by a lot (in part due to the civil war and the political uncertainty). On the other hand, Bangladesh has shown a lot of promise recently, but still they are unable to compete against the big three. India has cemented its place as the no.1 team from South Asia. Bangladesh will be aiming to become no.2, after displacing Sri Lanka and Pakistan.