GLENN'S PREDICTION LOOMS LARGE

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McGrath - something of a sage, it seems.

By Andrew Ramsey

Glenn McGrath was roundly pilloried when he cheekily predicted a 5-0 Ashes win for Australia prior to the series.

As much as McGrath likes to bait his opponents and does it with tongue firmly in cheek, he has suddenly emerged as something of a sage.

In the wake of England's most insipid performance of an increasingly bereft campaign, it heads to Sydney with morale dragging lower than a snake's belly and the ignominy of a whitewash looming large.

For the one element previous touring teams that have been crushed during an Australian summer have been able to bank on - the back-to-back Tests over Christmas and New year - has been rendered obsolete by England's three-day capitulation in Melbourne.

The reason why England won the New Year's Test in Sydney four years ago after being spanked in the previous four matches was because Australia's bowlers had been ground to exhaustion in pushing for the earlier victories.

That scenario has been repeated several times in recent Australian summers.

Having pushed so hard to win on a traditionally lifeless Melbourne pitch from Boxing Day, the Australians simply had no time to regroup before being confronted by another dry track at the SCG.

Little wonder India peeled off 705-7 declared at the ground in the final Test of the 2003-04 summer. Now the Australians have have been gifted an additional two days to recover thanks to England's ineptitude.

And less than an hour after the humiliation inflicted on Andrew Flintoff's team at the MCG, Ricky Ponting was talking about the need to secure a 5-0 Ashes win for the first time on home soil since 1920-21.

There is no shortage of motivation, even beyond the obvious historical significance.

Having sent Shane Warne in such emphatic terms in his final home Test in Melbourne, the Australians would feel they had let themselves down if the same honour was not afforded McGrath in his home town next week.

A whitewash would not only crown this team's string of remarkable achievements before the side is drastically reshaped, but it would represent total redemption after the enduring hurt of the 2005 Ashes defeat.

As Warne has already confirmed, senior members of this team would have bowed out of the game much earlier if the unfinished business of regaining the Ashes was not hanging over their heads.

There is also the not-so-small matter of the world record for consecutive Test victories, a mark that was set at a previously unthought of mark of 16 under the leadership of Steve Waugh between 1999 and 2001.

Ponting's team has currently strung together 11 without a loss or a draw, stretching back to the Boxing Day outing of 2005.

For a group that is forever motivated by its will to create its own history and carve a place for itself in the game's voluminous annals, that is a significant lure.

Which means that even after McGrath has taken his trash talk of whitewashes into retirement, the Australians will offer no respite to any comers. Certainly not an obviously under-qualified England at the edge of despair.