David Boon: Australia would get a hell of a lot of confidence from a drawn Ashes series

While the Australian media have been winding up England — witness the spats with Kevin Pietersen and Stuart Broad yesterday — some of their former players have taken a different line with the old enemy.

Okay, there has been no let up from Shane Warne spinning his usual line about Alastair Cook’s captaincy but, in these pages yesterday, former Aussie skipper Allan Border described England as a “ very good cricket team”.