ASHES CLASHES at Old Trafford generally provide exceptional theatre, but the air of expectation that will hover over Manchester this morning is exquisitely spiced by the fact that Australia go into the third Test in the unaccustomed position of trailing England.
Australia are uncomfortable with this situation, since they like to exert themselves early, let the opposition know they are there and hand out the invitations to play catch-me-if-you-can.
At home they are the masters of early aggression. Here, last time, they caught England napping at Old Trafford, and in the opening match of 1989 at Headingley, they pulverised the home team.
So as far as England are concerned, it is back to 1986 and Mike Gatting's tour before we find Australia trailing after two Tests - they never came back from that.
The tourists might point to the weather at Lord's and wonder if things might have been different. England were humbled in their first innings but, in a savagely-curtailed match, salvaged credibility by batting out the last day with aplomb. By the time the stumps came up for the last time, the initiative in the series - conceded not by poor batting, nor vastly inferior bowling, but by abysmal catching - was restored. The sides, we can now recognise, are a good match. Hence today's heavy air of expectation.
Old Trafford Tests often provide exceptional theatre. In 1993, Shane Warne announced himself to Ashes cricket by clipping Mike Gatting's off stump with the 'Ball From Hell', even if hindsight reveals that by that bowler's standards, it was an unexceptional delivery made remarkable only by its timing. The leg break that bowled Shivnarine Chanderpaul in Sydney last winter leg stump off his pad a turning at least five feet put it into perspective.
In 1989, it was David Boon's sweep to the square-leg boundary which won the game and regained the Ashes. Eight years before that, Ian Botham played his finest Test innings - one of the best ever - and, further back, Bobby Simpson's 311 in 1964 killed the Ashes as a contest, Richie Benaud's spin out of the rough bamboozled Peter May round his legs three years earlier, and, of course, in 1956, the whirling and casually modest hitch of the trousers saw Len Maddocks become Jim Laker's 19th victim of the match.
Providing the weather holds up (and there are doubts), the lack of preparation in Peter Marron's pitch is guaranteed to ensure further dramas.
Four years ago, a similar period of pre-Test rain hampered the groundsman's progress. From the start, the pitch was sufficiently damp for the ball to bite for the spinners and, after Mark Taylor and Michael Slater had got the series under way with a century opening partnership, Peter Such recorded six for 67, the best figures by an Ashes debutant for a hundred years.
This time, selection will be a delicate process and although Phil Tufnell's spin has already been jettisoned, England have 13 players on hand to allow for most contingencies. Getting the balance right will not be easy, but the likelihood of Devon Malcolm following Tufnell back down the motorway is an indication that the surface, while still drying, promises to be receptive to seam, rather than to pure pace.
The likeliest replacement would be Dean Headley. Doubts about his fitness, however, and a lack of cricket since his recovery have not helped and he might be a risk.
Mike Smith, Gloucestershire's left-arm swing bowler, would not let England down and his ability to swing the ball late into the right-hander is a rare commodity.
