Have the Aussies gone soft?

Today they stand on the brink of a remarkable achievement. Should they win at Old Trafford and clinch the five-match NatWest Series with two games to spare, they will have had the better of Australia in their most recent meetings in Tests, ODIs and Twenty20s.

That is something that nobody has done before against the world’s most consistent team and it would take some swallowing Down Under.

The question is: how have England improved so dramatically across all three formats?

One obvious reason is the quality of the players. Nothing can be won without talent and England have plenty of it. They certainly seem to have a better bowling attack than Australia.

But there is a more general reason that has to do with Flower. The idea of the battlefields visit was not a random one. It indicated a tolerant and imaginative style of man-management that has been in regular evidence since Flower was parachuted into the job 18 months ago.

It is a style that was badly missing during the short-lived Peter Moores era, when players complained of being worked in too intensive and insensitive a manner.

The Flower approach has been shaped by what Moores did wrong. Life for the players has not been easier but it has been different.

Rather than be confronted about how they might improve even as they were preparing for the next match, they have, where necessary, been taken out of the team and sent away to work on their game, their fitness or their mental approach.

Ian Bell was an early example of this. He was dropped after Flower had been in charge for one Test and did not return for six months, but when he did come back he was fitter and more mentally attuned to what was required. He has been a successful Test performer ever since and is back in the one-day squad.

Ravi Bopara was dropped from the Test side last August and sent away with specific instructions on how to improve.

He has played only once for England in eight months. We do not yet know whether he will eventually prove to be better prepared for international cricket, but he has been given every chance.

The policy of resting frontline players fits in to this approach.

The decision to leave out Andrew Strauss from the Bangladesh tour was criticised but he has come back not only fresh but with an enhanced approach to batting in one-day cricket.

Conscious that he needed to be more aggressive, Strauss played in a more attacking vein in the second ODI in Cardiff. He was left at home not simply to rest but also to improve, and it looks as though he has done that.

The same argument applies to Stuart Broad and Steven Finn being removed from the team to undergo strength and conditioning courses. Go away and come back better was the instruction, and in the case of Broad that has happened.

He took four wickets in Cardiff on Thursday and accounted for Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke with two pieces of classic fast bowling that, apart from anything else, laid down important markers for this winter’s Ashes.

The extra bounce Broad generated was responsible for both wickets: Ponting was caught behind going at a delivery outside off stump and Clarke was caught at short-leg (how often do you see someone fielding there in one-day cricket?) fending a ball off his face.

Flower has grasped what Moores did not, that if players are going to make fundamental changes — as almost all of them need to at some stage — then they need time and space.

The one exception to this was what happened during the tour of Bangladesh, where the team, in the confidence that they would win their matches anyway, were asked to work on improving their fitness.

Once a player joins the team, he is backed to the hilt — a philosophy that has underpinned the fearless one-day cricket the team has produced since realising the error of their ways in last year’s 6-1 NatWest Series hammering by Australia.

As a result the likes of Eoin Morgan — the second most audacious batsman to play for England in 20 years — and Craig Kieswetter came in knowing they could express themselves freely. And they have.

The most encouraging thing about this England team is that it feels like it is being governed by a coherent plan, as was the case during the best years of Duncan Fletcher. And it is being managed as much for the future as for today, which is one reason for optimism ahead of the Ashes and World Cup. England are genuine contenders to win both.

Indeed, there are signs of desperation beginning to creep in Down Under regarding the Ashes. Research by meteorologists has shown that Australia have a better chance of holding the urn at home in summers which have been preceded by the El Nino effect.

“In an average El Nino year, the conditions should favour the Australians,” an expert was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald. The argument is that drier pitches suit Australia’s style of bowlers. The last time England won the Ashes in an El Nino year was 1932-33.

Australia coach Tim Nielsen may also need a change of fortune. He has seen his team wipe the floor with weaker sides such as Pakistan and West Indies at home but it is months since he has had a full complement of players to choose from. He has spent a lot of energy simply fighting fires.

Already without his first-choice pace attack of Mitchell Johnson, Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus, he lost the impressive Ryan Harris after the first ODI and must now do without Nathan Hauritz, who has returned home with a foot injury.

Brad Haddin, his No 1 wicketkeeper, is also sidelined. These are the sort of problems that routinely plagued England in the lead-up to Ashes series.

It has to be said that Nielsen’s players are also ring-rusty. England are in rhythm and Australia are not, and it showed in the way their batsmen have been lunging at the ball to cover the potential movement that undid them in the Ashes here last summer.

While Strauss’s three frontline bowlers of Broad, James Anderson and Graeme Swann are beginning to understand inside out the one-day game and their roles, Ponting is handling an attack that is forever changing and in which some components are unfamiliar with each other.

Nor does it help when one of his opening bowlers, Clint McKay, cannot stop bowling no-balls. Shaun Tait, a surprise omission in the first place, has joined the squad and could play today.

With Michael Yardy fighting a groin strain, England may bring in Ryan Sidebottom to swing the ball in hot conditions after Ajmal Shahzad was released from the squad.

Ponting’s form is a concern with 34 runs in the two matches. He has had a longer lay-off than most, as he was not involved in the World Twenty20, and is feeling his way back as captain, too.

Much was made of Strauss having to reclaim his team after Alastair Cook and Paul Collingwood had held the reins, but the same argument applies to Ponting after Michael Clarke’s stewardship in the Caribbean, which unlike that of Cook and Collingwood was not altogether a personal triumph for the deputy.

It is unusual for Australia’s two most senior batsmen to be feeling out of sorts at the same time. Although Clarke scored runs in Southampton his innings was too slow, a point proved by Morgan’s brilliant match-winning century, and after Cardiff he knows he is going to be tested again with the short ball.

It is almost certainly tempting fate to say so but Ponting looks like a man searching for an exit strategy. His record has slipped since Australia’s struggles began two years ago and bowlers such as West Indies’ Kemar Roach have demonstrated that he too has a chink in his armour against the short-pitched ball.

Ponting turns 36 in December and would like to go out on a high, and in possession of the Ashes, but has he the team or the appetite to do it? He admitted England were a “confident” and “clever” team the other day, something he would surely not have conceded in his pomp.

It may require a Ponting century — on a ground where he played his greatest captain’s innings five years ago with a Test-saving ton — to turn this series round and show everyone that Australian cricket has not gone soft.

On TV today: England v Australia 10.30am Sky Sports 1