Ricky Ponting is determined to put right the one blot on his career this summer but Ralph Ellis reckons the Aussie captain's mission could yet be derailed by his English counterpart.

Ricky Ponting is probably entitled to talk the talk. After all, he's walked the walk plenty of times as well. The Australian captain has been part of and then presided over one of the great teams of modern cricket that has dominated the game for a decade.

But do I sense that there's just a tiny bit of nervousness behind the typical arrogance of the way he's prepared to unveil the Australian squad which will come here this summer to compete for the Ashes? After all the 2005 tour was unquestionably the bleakest moment of his time in charge, and not just because the team lost. Under pressure, Ponting himself lost his cool, most noticeably in the way he whinged and moaned when he was run out at Trent Bridge by substitute fielder Gary Pratt. It was one of the pivotal moments of the series, the day when the Aussies lost their air of invincibility because their captain lost his temper.

So there's a certain irony in the way Ponting has unveiled his own strategy to come back here later this summer and try to put right the one big blot on his reputation. He's planning to target England's captain Andrew Strauss for hostile treatment, letting him have a barrage of bouncers and balls whizzing past his ears and into his rib cage. "As we all know, the Australian team tries to target the captain," says Ponting. "If you can put the captain of the opposition teams under a bit more pressure you can generally take another couple of guys down with him and that's what we'll be trying to do.

"Since Strauss has been captain he has played very, very well and he's an important player for England. But we had the better of him out here in Australia last time, we had him under a lot of pressure, and it's important that we start the series off the same way over there."

To that effect Ponting will base his team around the recall of Brett Lee in the hope that the veteran pace bowler's near year of injury woes are behind him. Stuart Clark is also in the touring party, but the two older guys will be backed up by the pace of new discoveries Mitchell Johnson, Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus.

Will Strauss buckle? Well, the one encouraging thing from England's point of view is that since taking over the captaincy he's actually got better. In contrast to a long list of players down the years who have lost their personal form once they were put in charge, Strauss seems to have been able to blot out the other demands of leadership while he's at the crease. In seven Tests this year he's now averaged 59.7, and scored three centuries including that masterful 169 in Antigua.

Ponting's team remain [1.73] favourites to win the Ashes series, despite the success of Strauss and co. over the West Indies on the wet wickets of early May, and at the moment I'm not going to break my Grandad's golden rule of gambling: "Never bet against the Aussies".

In case you've not seen it elsewhere the full squad announced in the early hours was: R Ponting (c), M Clarke (vc), S Clark, B Haddin, N Hauritz, B Hilfenhaus, P Hughes, M Hussey, M Johnson, S Katich, B Lee, G Manou, A McDonald, M North, P Siddle, S Watson.

Five things you might not know about Brett Lee

1. Born in Wollongong in New South Wales, his mum was a piano teacher but dad Bob tried to get the kids into sport rather than music.

2. Older brother Shane has also played for Australia in 45 One Day internationals - but younger brother Grant was clearly mummy's boy and became an accountant and part-time concert pianist.

3. In the first formal game of cricket he ever played for a club called Oak Flats Rats he took six wickets in one over.

4. His fastest ever recorded delivery was 99.9mph in New Zealand in 2005 - a fraction slower than Shoaib Akhtar's world record 100.2mph.

5. His highest Test score as a batsman is 64 made against South Africa in 2006. He was on course to do better at 63 not out against the West Indies a couple of years later but Ricky Ponting then declared.

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