The best players, playing at their best – that’s what everyone wants to see, right? That’s what the Ashes is all about.

Actually, no. May the best team win? We’re starting to embrace the philosophy: ‘May England win, even if it’s only because Australia are rubbish’.

While England’s 2005 Ashes victory was all the sweeter for being against one of the best sides of all time, losing the return leg was no fun at all - and that’s the problem: great players, playing at their best, have a pretty decent chance of winning. We’ll have none of that.

Let’s take Mitchell Johnson for example. Here’s a man who’s lucky if he gets his arm in the correct sleeve getting dressed in the mornings, such is his aim at the moment. Would the next Test be more enjoyable if he found either line, length or both? No. Clearly it wouldn’t. We want to see him running in with his hand over one eye to help him focus better. We want to see him bowl a ball into his own kneecap.

Do we want to swoon at Ricky Ponting’s pull shot? No. We want to see him slip over and get run out for a duck without facing a ball. Do we want to see Brett Lee charging in attempting to rectify his risible bowling average against England? No. We want him to miss the next Test and maintain that average through his absence.

The best against the best is okay when it goes your way, but with results in doubt, we’d prefer a sure thing. Australia won the Ashes in ’89, ’91, ’93, ’95, ’97, ’99, ’01 and ’03. By the end of this sequence there were maybe three people in the whole of Australia who were even slightly bored with the relentless annihilation - and they perked up again for the 2006-07 series.

Do you want Australia to fight tooth and nail? We’d rather they buckled like a belt.

King Cricket blogs at www.kingcricket.co.uk. He is a cult figure in the world of cricket blogs and was TWC’s first Best-of-blogs winner in April 2008.