I don't think I've seen such pessimism ahead of an Ashes tour since the dark days of the 90s/early 00s. Then Australia were the best side in the world, with McGrath, Warne, Waugh etc. in their pomp, while England were amongst the worst, and Australia thrashed us at home as well as overseas.
These days it seems as though it shouldn't be so bad. England are actually well ahead of Australia in the test rankings. And there's a lot of similarities between the sides. They are both fairly tough prospects at home, but have both shown over the last twelve months that they are beatable home and away, are maddeningly inconsistent, and overly reliant on a few strong experienced players with quite a few gaps and question marks over the selection. When their key players fail to fire, they tend to go down in a heap, as while they both have some world class players, they are not world class XIs.
On paper, then, the doom and gloom around England's prospects seems too pessimistic. And yet as experienced watchers of cricket, and England in particular, we all find ourselves pointing towards an inevitable heavy defeat. The conventional wisdom seems to be that Australia's key area of strength, their fast bowling, will cut through England's key area of weakness, their top order batting, and without Stokes to bail England out, England will routinely fail with the bat. While England's bowlers are strong themselves in favourable conditions, they lack the pace to make decisive inroads into Australia's top order if the ball doesn't swing, so Australia are more likely to post big totals. And it's rare that a total of 250-300 in the first innings is sufficient to win a game in Australia - the Kookaburra ball and the conditions mean that, unlike say England or India, you rarely see low scorers where the ball dominates. Combine those two facts with the experience of two previous tours where England on paper sent much stronger XIs and were thrashed ignominously, the fact that Australia is a really tough place to tour, and the series always kicks off in Brisbane where the conditions (and crowds) seem to suit Australia best and be difficult for tourists to adjust to, and it seems hard to conjure up much enthusiasm for England's prospects.
The one big unknown in this is the day/night test, where some are saying that if the ball moves, England might sneak a win. I'm not so sure it will. While the Australia-New Zealand day nighter was a low scoring thriller, the groundsman is on record saying that he deliberately prepared a reasonable spicy wicket to make for an interesting game. In other D/Ns, like Edgbaston this year, last year at Adelaide, and those in the the UAE, the predicted low scores and bowler-friendly evening sessions haven't really materialised. I don't think that England's prospects are much better for that test than they are for any others.
On the other hand, I have a really hard time believing that it can be as bad as last time, because the last tour was possibly the worst tour that England have ever had in history (I remember looking up at the time, and statistically the only other one that I could find that came close was the 1985-86 'blackwash' tour to the West Indies,
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine ... ype=series). On their day England can beat anyone, and Australia are not so good or consistent as to manage 5 wins in a row - for at least one match it will come together so an England good performance meets an Australian average one, and England sneak a win. Maybe I'll be eating these words in two months. But surely Smith, Warner, Hazlewood and Starc are due a failure at some point?