There is great excitement when you are first selected for an Ashes tour.
It is one of the iconic tours, especially growing up as a young lad, I used to listen on my radio and I think it was Geoff Miller who took the catch when they were nine down in Melbourne - I remember listening to those previous Ashes battles and watching Willis and Botham in '81 at Headingley in that magnificent series.
You grow up on a diet of Ashes cricket, you play them over here but to actually get on a plane to Australia to try and challenge them out there, especially with that Australian side we were playing against, arguably one of the greatest sides to ever play the game, we realised it was a challenge but we always looked forward to it, without a doubt.
As an England cricketer you always feel the pressure, especially in that era, the 90s and early 2000s, you always felt the pressure was on you. You needed to perform, you wanted to stay in the side, you wanted to do well and you wanted to do well in an Ashes battle.
So, at no point going over to Australia did we think 'crikey, the pressure is on them'. You realised you were taking on a country, you weren't just taking on 11 individuals.
It was one thing battling with Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Matty Hayden, Ricky Ponting and all of that lot, but away from the game with the crowds, is a completely different thing, the people around the bars etcetera will let you know that you're in a battle but it is very enjoyable, most of the time it's in a friendly banter type of way.
I'll repeat, it's a great tour, it really is a fantastic tour. The knowledge of the game of cricket out there is second to none, you end up in a bar with someone like Ian Chappell discussing the game of cricket, or Richie Benaud, some of the greats of the game, you'd know they were very knowledgeable.
The pitches were magnificent; if you are a batsman going to Australia, you can never complain about pitches. The facilities, the nets, the Adelaide Oval you can have 30 different nets, the bowlers that come and bowl at you were of a high quality. I think one year, I wasn't on the tour, but England had Shane Warne bowling at them in the nets.
Different players do approach it differently. I played with someone like Mark Butcher who wouldn't over-complicate or over-think about the game. He wasn't someone to go and watch video footage, he kept batting and cricket fairly natural.
Whereas someone like me, I was a bit stressed about the game, I analysed the game quite a bit. I remember once, I sat in my room watching videos of Shane Warne bowling - that is how sad I was! I'm sure at some stage he had a video of me batting, trying to get me out!
I guess the very first time Glenn McGrath says they are going to win 5-0, you think 'okay, that is fairly confident' but probably true the way we played against Australia, it was usually 4-1. They'd win the first four and then they'd get on it and miss out on the last one.
But after a while, you realise why Glenn is saying it - it was a little bit tongue in cheek but also Glenn was the sort of cricketer who believed he was going to win every cricket match. Most Australians were like that, they went into every cricket match and most sporting battles believing they are going to win it. All credit to them for saying it, really.
I think you do approach it differently as captain. The pressures are obviously 10-fold as captain and every mistake you make - and obviously, it started badly with me with the toss in Brisbane when I stuck them in on the driest pitch there has ever been and they're 300-2 after day one and Simon Jones' knee is still on the outfield at the close of play.
You realise then that you're going to cop it from everyone, basically. You just have to hold your hands up and say you made a mistake.
I think on that evening I just turned to my team and said 'sorry, I messed that one up, I made a mistake' and I said publically, in the press, that I'd made a mistake and you try to move on. We ended up losing that Ashes series in about 11 days, that was the strength of it.
But I still wouldn't have it any other way, we were going to one of the great venues to play cricket, you go to the MCG on Boxing Day in front of 90-odd thousand, Sydney Cricket Ground, Adelaide, Brisbane - some of the great venues to play cricket against arguably one of the greatest cricket sides there has ever been.
Facing up against Warne and McGrath and bowling at Ponting, Hayden, Justin Langer, you wouldn't swap it for the world. These guys out there now, will absolutely be looking forward to it.
Nowadays Ashes series are a lot closer. If anything, they have actually become one-sided towards England of late, the challenge for them is to go out there with the different conditions, the Kookaburra ball and all the stuff that I mentioned, but you always think when you're stepping on that plane you are seriously well looked after in Australia.
If you don't come back either with a successful tour or as winners then you only have yourself to blame. You can't blame pitches, you can't blame conditions, you can't blame hotels or whatever.
You only have yourself to blame because everything is laid on for you to be a good cricketer, that is why they produce good cricketers. It is quite a remarkable place to go and play cricket.