Vaughan: 'We can win back Ashes'

Date released: 30 January 2009

Vaughan:'England could be favourites' The second excerpt from our exclusive interview: former England captain Michael Vaughan talks about England's prospects of winning back the Ashes Urn this summer.

We'll publish the last snippet from our interview next week.

Keep up-to-date with Lords.org to hear his views on the England captaincy debacle and more.

• Book your hospitality places for the England v Australia Test at Lord's - part of the Ashes Series

• Listen to Vaughan's thoughts on England's Ashes prospects (1.9 MB)

England have to focus

"Winning the Ashes? It's all about dealing with pressure and the pressures thrown at you.

Vaughan with the original Ashes Urn in the MCC Museum "Obviously Australia are coming through a transitional phase but they'll come over here as a very tough unit to beat.

"You know what they [Australia] are going to bring - they're going to miss the expertise of people like McGrath, Hayden, Gilchrist - but they'll bring a very good team.

"We talk far too much about other things, things we can't control. We just have to get our focus right and start winning. We have to start winning soon and get a bit of momentum going into The Ashes.

'England could be favourites'

"It should be a great series. I guess the hardest pressure is we might be favourites to win it. That's quite a pressure to deal with. It'll be all about how we deal with that.

"Australia are going through a transition but both teams are in a quite similar position.

"They just lost to a series to South Africa but won the last game - we did the same.

"Australia lost 2-0 in India, we lost 1-0 - but that game we might have played, maybe we'd have lost 2-0 as well.

Luck & momentum

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Also available in earth "It really is going to be all about momentum. The teams play so much cricket, leading into The Ashes. Luck might play its part - keeping players fit and fresh.

"We've got the World Twenty20, IPL, some tough tours - that's a lot of cricket. You just hope the boys can come through it fit and we can hit The Ashes hard.

"It'll be a great test. Both squads have got 13 or 14 really good players - if you lose three or four of them through injury you lose a lot of expertise from your squad.

"It'll be exciting, The Ashes always are. It's one we have to look at and say it's a great opportunity to win them back."