An Ashes series for some is as much about the collective experience of sleep deprivation, stale beer and pizza boxes, as it is the cricket itself

Where were you when Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath hung in there for those four agonising overs at Old Trafford in 2005? Or when Allan Border lost his cool with Craig McDermott in ‘93? Glenn McGrath’s 8-38 at Lord’s and Jason Gillespie’s 7-37 at Headingley? What about Adam Gilchrist’s blazing 152 at Edgbaston in 2001?

It’s always been a dodgy premise for Australians, that “where were you when…” Ashes question, because unless you paid some exorbitant amount of money to get sunburnt and drunk on the hill with Jeff Thomson and 25 balding men in matching polos, we all know exactly where we were; half-asleep and huddled under blankets on the sofa.

Personally I remember each Ashes series by the houses I was living in when they happened; 1989-2001: tucked up in bed at Mum and Dad’s listening to the radio with the ABC cricket guide opened on my chest; 2005: in a squalid share house surrounded by empty pizza boxes and the stench of stale beer; 2009: in a slightly less squalid share house surrounded by empty pizza boxes and the stench of stale beer; 2013: co-habitation with its fancy non-Ikea furniture and proper meals cooked on stoves, but at the end of play still dozing off on the sofa for that deep, doomed three-and-a-half-hour Ashes micro-nap.

As a child, the former ABC cricket broadcaster Neville Oliver got his Ashes fix listening to radio descriptions and rode the resultant waves of emotion each morning after. “Defeat at the hands of England [was] such a desolate happening as to be worth a day off school,” he said. “Victory was as good as the end of school year.”

To remember each series better we also have all those creaking shelves-worth of Ashes themed books; The Ashes Crown the Year; Fight for the Ashes; Operation Ashes; Botham’s Ashes; Boony’s Ashes; The Ashes Retained; The Ashes Thrown Away; Aussies and Ashes; Ashes to Ashes; Martin McCague’s Bumper Book of Ashes Anecdotes. Okay, the last is a slight embellishment.

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Maybe Australia’s mood isn’t quite as cricket-dependent these days but knowing glances will be shared by those yawning into smart phones and scrolling through the Cricinfo app on the train. That meeting can definitely be shifted back to 10am, by the way. Your tax return? Do it in September. We’re all in this together. Except for my sister-in-law. I don’t think she realises yet the true reason that my brother just took six weeks of long service leave. I guess she will soon. Good luck Pete.

In actual fact no-one should get too worried about prolonged sleep deprivation or major marital conflict this time because the 2015 Ashes series will fly past us rapidly; 25 days of cricket crammed into just 48 days of svelte schedule. Now Australia’s standby players make do with a three-day tour match wedged between the 2nd and 3rd Tests and one other following the 4th, by which time their input might be irrelevant. Covering the languidly-paced 1953 series, former Australian Test opener Jack Fingleton also had time to take in the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the climactic stages of a thrilling Ryder Cup at Wentworth and also met England’s executioner. If he’d been assigned to this one he’d be lucky to see much more than press boxes and hotel rooms.

The stage has been set well for this series thanks to the now-compulsory verbal wars, which have established a new benchmark in pre-Ashes nonsense; English paceman Mark Wood almost inventing his own rivalry with fringe all-rounder Shane Watson, Watson replying quite predictably that encounters with net bowlers aren’t prominent among his great cricket anecdotes; Joe Root’s disappointment over David Warner’s disappointment over their mutually disappointing behaviour at a nightspot we can probably all agree was a particularly disappointing choice of drinking venue; Ben Stokes preemptively stating he could handle any sledging that comes his way; Steve Smith kicking off all of that sledging stuff before the Australians even arrived; Stuart Broad’s suggestion that run-machine Smith might in fact be a bit shaky, presumably in the way that Bradman was often susceptible once he’d passed 200. By the time the first ball is bowled today in Cardiff, hopefully we’ve also established which of Root and Warner’s fathers is fastest and strongest.

Amid all this froth, a few important events have also transpired. Ryan Harris has sadly succumbed to injury, dead level with Bruce Reid in claiming 113 wickets from 27 Tests and the source of universal lament that the game couldn’t have had him for one last bone-grinding burst of energy. With no small amount of irony Harris has been replaced in the Australian squad by the unfortunately-nicknamed Pat ‘Cummo’ Cummins, star of as many health insurance advertising campaigns as Test matches.

That’s not the only upheaval within Australia’s ranks either. The internal battle for almost half the positions in the Cardiff Test XI paints a far murkier picture of the side’s likely fate in this series than they like to project. The buoyancy of Smith’s batting and World Cup success only partially obscure the fact that Watson, Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin and Chris Rogers are all creaking towards the finish line in Tests. Those who sit at the fringes could at any point be thrown into the fray.

And England? If Australia gets it emphatically right we might see the dethroning of an Alastair Cook as captain, giving the series a retro dash of Athertonian (Gowerian? Goochian?) dread. The greater joy for Australians is that England’s 13-man squad for Cardiff boasts five players – dynamic keeper-batsman Jos Buttler, opener Adam Lyth, spinner Adil Rashid, all-rounder Moeen Ali and paceman Wood – who’ve yet to feature in an Ashes Test and so provide the series most of its novelty allure.

History tells us that lamentably few Ashes series’ in recent memory have been tight run and recent form dictates that Australia enter this one with favoritism. But let’s be honest, this is a rivalry in which the cocky favourite has so often found comeuppance and for that, Australians should remain alert and awake.