right to the pitch: sydney

Ponting and Warne should shine in Sydney.

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Sydney Cricket Ground venue guide

By Dave Tickner

Last 10 Tests: Australia won eight, drawn one, lost one

Last 10 tosses: Ten batted first (won four, drew one, lost five); None felded first

Groundsman's View: "By the fourth, and certainly on the fifth day, it will break up and take spin. It will take maximum spin for the likes of Warne against the Englishmen." Tom Parker, Curator

Last time out: Australia beat South Africa by eight wickets in

January 2006, a game assured of its place in cricket history for two reasons; Graeme Smith became only the second captain to declare twice in a Test and lose (Garry Sobers was the first, fact fans), while Ricky Ponting scored two hundreds in his 100th Test - the first player to achieve the feat.

In fairness to Smith, his first declaration came with 450 runs on the board and the second was a sporting one as the South Africans tried in vain to secure a series-levelling victory.

South Africa held the advantage from lunch on day one until lunch on day five, but Ponting's assault on the fifth afternoon as Australia chased down a target of 278 in 76 overs with almost indecent ease showed the quality of Australia's captain, but also the Sydney pitch.

If anything it flattened out as the game progressed and but for Smith's admirable desire to engineer a result the game would surely have ended in stalemate.

Australia played Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill in tandem at a ground that traditionally favours spinners, but they collected just six wickets in the match which is perhaps one reason the Aussies have gone with an unchanged 12 this time out. However, MacGill took four of those six wickets and, particularly in the second innings, outbowled his more illustrious team-mate.

However, with the pitch staying true to the last, the fact South Africa's only spin option was debutant Johan Botha hit their last-day hopes of victory. His 12.3 overs cost 77 and he was embarrassingly out of his depth. It would have been interesting to see the impact a better twirler might have had on that fifth day.

England's last visit: Nasser Hussain's men ended a traumatic series on a high note with a fine 225-run win in the final Test of an

embarrassingly one-sided series.

Mark Butcher made 124 as England reached 362 in thier first innings, but centuries from Steve Waugh and Adam Gilchrist secured a one-run lead for Australia.

With the game effectively reduced to a one-innings-a-side contest, man-of-the-series Michael Vaughan stepped up to blast 183 and enable England to declare on 452 for nine.

Australia lost both openers with the score on just five and never really recovered. Andrew Caddick ended with seven for 94 as England registered a resounding victory but still lost the series 4-1.

Weather Forecast: "If England have replaced net sessions with rain dancing, it appears to have worked. There's every chance the weather could help them avoid a whitewash, with the first three days set to be blighted by showers. If England have managed to make a mess of things in the play that is possible before day four, though, they're in trouble as the weather should improve dramatically towards the end of the Test."

Conclusion: 'Win the toss and bat' is a mantra popular with every Test captain at Sydney. You have to go back 16 Tests and almost 15 years since Mohammad Azharuddin inserted the Australians in a Test that marked the debut of a certain SK Warne.

Warne, like most spinners, enjoys bowling at Sydney on a pitch that

traditionally helps the twirlers. His team-mate and fellow leggie Stuart MacGill even refers to the SCG as "my house".

The amount of turn generated is attributed to the use of "Bulli soil"

beneath the turf on the square since the ground's inception. Without getting too Alan Titchmarsh about it, Bulli soil is volcanic in nature and has a very high clay content that produces hard, true pitches where the ball spins like a top. Intriguingly, the SCG were dangerously close to running out of the crucial dirt after redevelopment covered previous hotspots, but work to alter the layout at nearby Woollongong Golf Club revealed two seams of the black soil, enough to see spinners licking their lips at Sydney until well into the next century.

But the hard, true pitches also suit batsmen who like to play their shots, and Sydney is a favourite ground for Ponting. In 11 Tests at the SCG, he's plundered five centuries (including a double) and has an average of 84.35.