Shane Warne: New players can match me and McGrath

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10 April 2012

More than a few introductions may be required when England and Australia take the field for the first Ashes Test in Cardiff.

Only five of the team who started the final Test in Sydney in January 2007 are in the touring party this time around.

Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath have given way for the likes of Peter Siddle and Nathan Hauritz, Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist for Phillip Hughes and Brad Haddin as Australia's new guard has emerged.

Those retirements mean England will be taking on a new-look side, a side as yet unproven in an Ashes series, a side with its fair share of critics.

And they have given England not just reason for hope but for belief.

They have, though, not given one recently-retired Australian cause for concern; Warne's money is, unsurprisingly, still firmly on his fellow countrymen.

Warne said: "A lot of those players retired 18 months ago now.

"We are very lucky that Australia has plenty of players who will see that (the old ones won't be missed). The Australians will be strong."

However, the figures show just want the tourists will be missing.

Of the 96 wickets England lost in the last series in Australia, 44 - that is pushing half - were taken by Warne and McGrath.

Justin Langer, Hayden and Gilchrist, meanwhile, contributed a combined 945 runs. However precocious the replacements, those absences will be felt.

If Hauritz's match figures of one for 158 in the tour game against Sussex are anything to go by, his bowling is about as menacing as a rather placid hamster.

The evergreen Ricky Ponting is still there, though, no doubt still with plenty of unfinished business from 2005, while the likes of 20-year-old opener Hughes and quick Mitchell Johnson are unlikely to make things easy for the English.

Then there are the fitness doubts over all-rounder and talisman Andrew Flintoff, with no guarantee - despite surgery and a successful return to first-class action for Lancashire last month - the knee he injured while playing for Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League will survive a gruelling Ashes series.

Opting to chase the riches on offer in the IPL will, though, not be a decision Flintoff comes to regret even if it does hamper his Ashes form, according to Warne.

"I don't think he will regret it. It is just the nature of the game. People get injured," the Australian said.

It is difficult to see many England fans being quite so philosophical if the knee gives way on the opening morning.

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