As The Ashes approach, you could be forgiven for thinking that the last time the teams met was in England four years ago. All we seem to hear about is the Ashes 2005. Great, great series, it is true, but hang on ... wasn't there a series in Australia three winters ago? Why aren't we hearing more about that? Surely that has more relevance to what might happen this time. Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that Australia won 5-0?

One side winning easily is the last thing the backers and broadcasters want from any sporting event. It doesn't help the hype, does it? Come on, buy a ticket, pull up a chair, for the clash of two teams who the last time they met ... were divided by a gulf as big as the Indian Ocean.

So we had the spooky exchange on Sky TV shortly before the beginning of the match at Worcester on Wednesday, when the Australians were starting their final warm-up before Cardiff.

The always-Tiggerish Charles Colvile wanted to talk about nothing but the Glory Of '05, and the shocks Steve Harmison had given them at Lord's, when Nasser Hussain, always good when it comes to administering a dose of realism, pointed out that there had - actually - been a series between England and Australia in 2006-07 when the Aussies didn't seem too worried by anything Harmison or any other Englishman had thrown at them.

So viciously did Colvile slap down poor old Nasser - "I don't think there's any need for us to talk about the time Australia won 5-0," he said, or words to that effect - that Sky were in danger of being charged with screening excessive violence ahead of the watershed. Sky's trailers for the series also talk solely about the drama of '05; nothing about the Gabbatoir or the Nightmare at Adelaide.

So much for the victors being the men who rewrite history. If you like your history revised, look no further than English cricket. Look what the ECB did to Allen Stanford ... completely airbrushed out of their annual report.

Colvile's not alone of course. The whole country seems determined to hark back to 2005. Maybe it's in our genes, the same genes that encouraged Lord Nelson to put the telescope to his blind eye so that he could ignore an order to retreat at the Battle of Copenhagen. Except Nelson had a strategy. This is just ignoring inconvenient truths.

Despite extensive scope for practice, English cricket has never been great at confronting its disaster. Its usual response is to set up an inquiry - it was the Schofield Report after the '06-07 whitewash - which makes various recommendations which the Suits then cherry-pick as they see fit.

Basically, Duncan Fletcher carried the can last time, being removed as coach asap - in fact with such haste that the ECB hadn't time to spot that the bloke they were hustling in through the front door was rubbish.

So we plough on towards the Ashes, with almost no one daring to spell out what England's shortcomings are - although Andrew Flintoff has done his best to give us all clues - while it's open season on the Aussies, who we are really not sure can bat, bowl or field.

And yet this sort of scepticism is the surest way to bring out Aussie grit. The South Africans made this mistake after beating Australia on their own soil. When the Australians arrived for the return series, the South Africans, with all the wit and charm for which they are renowned, suggested they might be the worst Australian team ever to crawl over a dunghill to reach their shores and would be lucky to take any of the three Tests into fourth days. Australia won 2-1.

Remember, too, 1989. Then, Allan Border's team were dismissed by English critics as colourless and lacking great players. England sensed a third successive Ashes win at home. What happened? Australia won 4-0 and it would have been 6-0 had it not rained.