The first Test starts in Perth on Friday, 21 November and Australia will be led by Steve Smith in the absence of injured captain Pat Cummins.<\/p>\n
Fast bowler Cummins says he is “on track” to have recovered from a lower back injury in time to play the second Test, a day-night match in Brisbane starting on 4 December.<\/p>\n
Australia also have uncertainty over who is going to bat in their top three.<\/p>\n
Usman Khawaja is set to open, but the hosts must decide between giving a debut to opener Jake Weatherald, recalling the in-form Marnus Labuschagne as either an opener or at number three and whether to stick with all-rounder Cameron Green at three or move him down the order.<\/p>\n
Anderson said those issues, compared to how consistent Australia’s team selection has been in the last 10 years, mean this is “probably their weakest team” since 2010-11.<\/p>\n
“There are question marks there, definitely, and there are cracks that England could potentially expose,” he added. “There’s a great chance for England to get on top early.”<\/p>\n
However, England’s all-time leading wicket-taker said there is still a lot of “quality” in Australia’s batting and bowling – even with the “huge” absence of Cummins.<\/p>\n
He said: “They probably just edge out England in terms of being favourites, but I don’t think there’s much in it. It’s a tough one to call, so I’d say Australia, just.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first Test starts in Perth on Friday, 21 November and Australia will be led by Steve Smith…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-263001","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\/263001","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=263001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}