SIR JIMMY: This is the plan fearless England will use against Starc

One of the questions people have been asking in the build-up to Brisbane, given his elite record of 81 wickets in pink-ball Test matches, is how best to keep out Mitchell Starc.

Now, I don’t know if this is the answer that England fans will want to hear, but my assumption is that the batsmen intend to be even more positive than they were in Perth, where Australia opened up a 1-0 Ashes lead.

From my experience of being in that dressing room, my hunch is that this England team will be thinking that if Starc’s going to get the ball moving around, there will be one with your name on it in every spell he bowls.

So to counter that, they’ll be thinking of finding ways to score, to put him under pressure, to knock him off his length. What they should have learned from the first Test, though, is the way to do it. Driving the ball on the up in Perth wasn’t the right way to go about things.

Brisbane is not quite as extreme as Perth in terms of bounce, but it’s still bouncier than pitches you get in England. So again, driving can be quite tricky, especially early on in your innings, unless it’s really full. It’s about assessing the conditions and recognising your potential scoring areas.

For example, if Starc is hooping it back in to the right-handers from his left-arm angle, I can see Harry Brook playing the lap and the paddle sweep, to try to disrupt him. Those are the sorts of shots a number of players will be thinking about, as well as using their feet to advance down the wicket. Improvisation will be central to their thoughts.

Aside from Joe Root, who could back his technique to make sure he gets through a long innings, everyone else will be thinking: ‘Where can I score?’ 

Part of the reason why Starc is so deadly in day-night Tests is because he’s so good at bowling to new batters: he bowls fast, swings it, he’s got a great yorker on him and tends to come up with jaffas to order at the start of an innings.

He has struck 25 times in the first over of a Test innings, but the pink ball is harder to see than the traditional red one because of the stitching on the ball – the contrast of pink and black being more difficult to pick up than the red with white seam, especially under lights when the pink is more blinding.

It means that regardless of what time of day you bat, whether it be daylight or under the floodlights, for the first 10-20 deliveries you are vulnerable.

The players have had plenty of time to get used to it in the nets and they will have practised under lights, finding different methods and talking about combatting it as a batting group. Some people will find it easier to sight than others.

For me, especially playing with the pink ball in Australia, it felt more like the Dukes ball we use in Test cricket in England than the red Kookaburra ball because when it’s new, it swings a bit more and seems to stay in decent condition longer. So much so that if you bowl first, it can still be moving around into that evening period with the lights on.

I absolutely loved playing with the pink ball. The last Test I played in Adelaide, I got my only five-wicket haul in 21 matches in Australia and at times it felt like so much fun.

For me, swinging the ball has always been the thing that has given me most joy playing cricket and there was a period when it was swinging that much that I went around the wicket to Steve Smith, bowling inswingers like Mike Procter used to, trying to take a wicket with every ball.

There will be periods for England’s attack this week when conditions are heavily weighted in their favour, but in these matches, you must also recognise the periods where you’ve just got to sit in.

Those periods in which there might not be a lot happening, knowing that when the lights do kick in or when twilight is upon you, it’s a bit more difficult for the batter to pick up the ball. Then you’ve got to cash in and you’ve got to be ready to attack.

For Australia, Scott Boland does the bulk of his bowling in these lull periods, so that Starc is kept fresh for when it is hooping around.

Assessing the conditions, and being tactical by perhaps bowling your spinner in the afternoon session, is something that make pink ball Tests unique.

But I can’t imagine England ever trying to sit in and just be defensive under Ben Stokes. So if it’s not doing anything, they might go to shorter stuff, for example.

But I do think it will suit England’s bowlers as well because of it staying harder longer than a normal Kookaburra. And if the pitch is anything like the last time we played at the Gabba, the extra grass could mean seam movement throughout the game. If that’s the case, you can rotate your seamers throughout.

I ended up with 24 wickets in six day-night matches, but personal records aside, I’m a purist and the Ashes should be five traditional-style Tests.

Floodlit matches are not something that fans particularly want in such a big series. They were brought in to increase attendance, but for the Ashes the grounds are already full, the interest huge. And the late start is also likely to intensify an atmosphere that is notoriously hostile.

If you are fielding on the boundary at the Gabba, the crowd are right on top of you and you can hear every bit of sledging you get from each fan. It’s non-stop, generally getting worse throughout the day, and I can imagine by the last session of a day-night game, with the amount of beer consumed, it will get quite lairy.

You’ve got to be able to cope with that, and it will be Stokes’ job as captain to manage the players in that situation. If someone’s getting a load of stick on the boundary, he might need to change it up, get someone down there who can take it.

Despite the result, and the speed at which it was delivered, there are positives for England to carry into this match from Perth. At the start of an Ashes series, some people look like rabbits caught in headlights, but England’s players looked fairly calm.

It was just some poor decision-making throughout the two days plus a great innings by Travis Head that led to the downfall. If Usman Khawaja was fit for that second innings, things could have looked completely different.

Head coming in with Australia 20 for three rather than him just thinking, ‘Right, I’m going to have a go here’ would have been a very different story.

This is a great opportunity. This is an England team that really wants to create history and they will be leaning on the fact none of their predecessors have won in Brisbane since 1986-87.

Like the way they play Starc, their thoughts will only be positive ones.

Robin Smith epitomised what a Test cricketer should be 

Unfortunately, Robin Smith and I didn’t really cross paths once he retired, but I played against him in 2002 – my first season as a County Championship cricketer with Lancashire – when he was captain of Hampshire.

Growing up in the 1990s, I watched loads of him and loved his style. He epitomised what a Test cricketer should be. He had guts, he had the shots to be able to attack when needed, and he could take any bowling attack apart. He was just great theatre whenever he batted.

His playing career came to an end 12 months after that county match in Southampton, during the summer in which I made my Test debut and although I didn’t know him, everything I heard about him was as positive as the way he played: people would talk of an amazing team-mate and an amazing bloke.

He was an icon of the game in an era when the England team wasn’t particularly anything to write home about.