The Ashes is just hours away, and England have a rare chance to do the glorious double – win the World Cup and an Ashes series in the same year.

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If anyone thinks their World Cup campaign has worn them out, think again. The voices from the camp suggest anything but. It was Moeen Ali who put it most articulately. “It would be great to send Australia home from nearly six months in the country with nothing to show for it,” he wrote in The Guardian.

And for Moeen, it’s personal. He’s spoken about it before, even going so far as to say Australia are the only team he’s disliked, after alleging in his autobiography that an Australian player, during the 2015 Ashes in Cardiff, had made a derogatory remark against him.

That’s only fuelled his desire to win this time around. “Thinking back to the end of the last Ashes series, when Australia celebrated on the outfield of the Sydney Cricket Ground with those oversized hands on the podium rubbing in the 4-0 scoreline, it was obviously a very difficult time. Quite upsetting, really.”

Australia have turned a corner since those days of say first, think later. The ball-tampering saga of 2018 and the inquest that followed, regarding their dressing room culture and behaviour on and off the field, have all prompted a change for the better, something Moeen made a point of mentioning.

Stokes was having none of it though. He wants his teammates to make an immediate impact, hard and early. “We don’t want to give anything away to any of their batsmen,” he said. “We want to let them to know we are here to be serious and everyone in the changing room is desperately trying to get that urn back because it’s not good them having it.”

And so, after all the waiting, here we are. Australia’s World Cup was ended by their arch-rivals, and so heated are things between the two sides, it’s likely they would have preferred Afghanistan – who went through the whole tournament winless – to have been the ones to knock them out.

Australia have a chance to hit back now. They won’t have a better chance for bragging rights – and brag they will for years if they can puncture a hole in England’s World Cup euphoria. As for England, they will be motivated by the possibility of a historic double. This should be an absolute cracker.

England (confirmed XI): Rory Burns, Jason Roy, Joe Root (c), Joe Denly, Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow (wk), Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes, Stuart Broad, James Anderson

Australia (likely XI): David Warner, Cameron Bancroft, Usman Khawaja, Steve Smith, Travis Head, Matthew Wade, Tim Paine (c/wk), Pat Cummins, James Pattinson, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood

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AustraliaEngland Ben StokesMoeen AliTim PaineAshesEngland v AustraliaSeries Editorial