By Crikey reporter Sophie Vorrath

Forget the football, says The Mirror,
after England’s humiliating World Cup soccer
1-0 defeat to Northern Ireland, the nation will be cheering England’s
cricketers to a “vital” Ashes glory today, with Michael Vaughan, Freddy Flintoff and co favourites to snatch the
urn back from the Aussies.

Some sporting occasions transcend their usual boundaries,
says the Daily Telegraph,
and today’s Ashes final is undoubtedly one of them. Freddie Flintoff
has personally promised to grab the Ashes back for England, says The Sun. And he’d better come through, says the Tele, because for the first time in 16
years “the country expects, nay demands,” the return of the urn.

“This is it then,” says Mike Selvey
in The Guardian. “The hype
is done, Glenn McGrath has blethered his last soundbite, the talk stops
now. Only the deed remains.”
McGrath – who’s return to the fray will make this task just that bit
harder – and his “gum-chewing mates” have talked a good game all
summer, says the Tele, but even they
know that, come time to deliver, there’s “nothing more deadly on a
cricket pitch
than a silent Australian.”

But let’s just hope it doesn’t all in end rain, says The Guardian, piping up with some good old-fashioned English negativity. “No less an authority than
Richie Benaud himself thinks this has been the best series ever,” says the paper, “and
no one has seen more tests than he.” But the latest weather forecasts show rainclouds on the horizon.

On the dawn of Shane Warne’s farewell to Test cricket on English soil, the spinner writes in The Times that he is looking forward to the challenge of the final test: “I always knew it would be, because I had great
respect for this England side from the start. For our part, we want to
put on a show and remind people why we are the best in the world and
have been for a number of years.”

The Independent’sJames Lawton
responds to Warney with a cheeky open letter to the “departing legend,” declaring his
“love” for the spinner and willing him to “fail at the Oval over
the next few days
as spectacularly as you succeeded with your first delivery in the Old
Country.”

And in The Times, former prime minister Sir John Major
is poetic about this Ashes series. Revealing his hidden talent for rhyme in
honour of the game of cricket to the paper, he offers one example of what he
once crafted while trapped on the front bench during a Test match:

A Cricket Prayer

“Oh, Lord, if I must die today,
Please make it after close of play.
For this I know, if nothing more,
I will not go, without the score.”