Warne's warning to England

THE sledging controversy involving Australian spin icon Shane Warne and Sussex captain Chris Adams is only a grim reminder of what is in store for England ahead of this summer's Ashes Test series.

If England captain Michael Vaughan cares to look deep into the incident which involved Warne who is leading Hampshire county and his counterpart Adams, he will see a hidden message for him and his England team mates that winning back the Ashes is not going to be a walk in the park.

Adams publicly accused Warne of trying to humiliate young wicket-keeper Matt Prior. Understandably as captain he may have been wanting to shield Prior from what he interpreted as bullying. The tactics used by Adams bordered on a similarity to what Australia usually subjects visiting teams to their country.

The incident arose after Prior who is seen as a likely candidate for the Ashes series had a mid-pitch collision with Warne's Australian team mate Simon Katich.

"I thought cricket was a noncontact sport and I was sticking up for my mate and letting Prior know what I thought about his behaviour," Warne was quoted by 'The London Times'.

Warne's county Hampshire also sprang to his defence and accused Adams of being 'hypocritical'.

Dean Jones, the former Australian batsman and one-time team mate of Warne said: "Once Warney looks you in the eye he will get under your skin."

"He got that from Ian Botham. Botham loved to look at the opposition batsmen, study their idiosyncrasies and nervous habits. He wanted to get under your skin and make you think about him and not your game, and that's what Warney does," Jones told BBC Sport.

"You pick your mark, certain players who might get in your way and need a gee-up, then you do it in a way that will not distract you from your game," Jones explained. "It is done in a manner meant to unsettle your opponent and take cricket away from the pitch and into the mind."

"Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Everybody knows which players might get revved up a bit, and Warney loves looking at you. Once Shane starts doing that, he's got you. It's part of the learning process for young Prior," he said.

Warne, Botham and Prior are all well known in Sri Lanka. In the past four months all three have been to this country in different capacities.

Warne and Botham came to offer aid to tsunami hit areas and help people affected by it. Prior performed brilliantly for England 'A' on their tour here notching up scores of 76 (n.o.), 40 (n.o.), 0 and 104 in the two unofficial tests against Sri Lanka 'A'.

England's recent run of success in Test cricket where they recorded eight straight wins in a row has placed them in an enviable position to challenge the invincibility of Ricky Ponting's Australians.

Pressure has been building on England that this is their best opportunity to recapture the Ashes for the first time since 1985 when they won it under the captaincy of David Gower.

It was under Gower that they also surrendered the Ashes to Australia four years later when Allan Border's men thrashed them 4-0 in a six-Test series at home. Since then four England captains had tried to wrest it from Australia and failed.

Australia's supremacy has been such that they have won the last seven series on the trot defying the attempts made by Graham Gooch, Michael Atherton, Alec Stewart and Nasser Hussain.

Is Vaughan the man to break the hoodoo? He will not only come up against two of the best bowlers in Test cricket today - Warne, the world's leading wicket-taker and Glenn McGrath, but also against the best sledger's in the business.

This Ashes series will not only be a battle for supremacy on the field but also a war of words. Whoever the match referee is the series will not be a bed of roses.

The same applies to the umpires. Only the best should be picked for such a time-honoured series and one can think of no one better than our own Ranjan Madugalle, the ICC's chief referee.