With the Ashes now just eight days away, we have been asking who you think will be the key players on either side.<\/p>\n
The Test Match Special team will give their choices next week but here is a selection from BBC Sport readers on social media: <\/p>\n
Jon Weedon: Don’t laugh but, for me, Zak Crawley. The better the bowling, the better he plays and I have a feeling this is the series he repays the faith shown in him.<\/p>\n
Alex Mc: Brydon Carse – tends to like bowling with the kookaburra and could be pretty handy with the bat. Feel like that number eight spot is open now Woakes has retired. Australia will have three number 11s. England could have an advantage by batting deeper.<\/p>\n
Steve Lilley: Josh Tongue for England if they’re brave enough to play him. He is tailor made for those pitches. All he needed to do was add a bit of consistency from the summer. Perfect, horrible length when he’s on it.<\/p>\n
Same old same old for Australia, going to be all about getting Smith out or drying him up. I think they’ll pack the leg side and bowl at his stumps. Well, that’s what I would do…<\/p>\n
Mangesh Deore: Always and always Joe Root. Fantastic player, treat to watch. I am an Indian supporter and he has tormented us but you just love the guy! You almost feel happy when does well.. so “want” him to have an impact.<\/p>\n
From Australia.. it might just be Josh Hazelwood. That guy is special and might make an impact if stays fit.<\/p>\n
Simon Clarke: I think whoever performs better between the two wicketkeepers could be a defining factor in the series. Jamie Smith is immensely talented but looked fatigued towards the end of the India series due to adjusting to keeping for multiple days in multiple tests. Seeing how he copes with the Australian conditions will be interesting. <\/p>\n
Capitalising on and decisively taking opportunities when they present themselves, I think will be hugely important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the Ashes now just eight days away, we have been asking who you think will be the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-261580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}