Captain Andrew Flintoff believes England will have to improve on their 2005 performance if they are to retain the Ashes in Australia.

As the England squad prepared to fly out from Heathrow on Friday, he told The Sun newspaper: "We'll have to play well to succeed, probably even better than we did in 2005. But we have lads who can perform at the highest level. I believe we have a good chance."

England won last year’s series 2-1 to end 18 years of Australian domination - but have been frustrated since by injuries. Regular captain Michael Vaughan and fast bowler Simon Jones both miss the tour while left-arm spinner Ashley Giles has been included in the squad despite spending most of the year sidelined with a hip problem.

Australia fast bowler Glenn McGrath has repeated his prediction of a 5-0 whitewash - a forecast that came back to haunt him last year. And England spinner Monty Panesar insisted previous poor results would not affect the team. "We as a squad have a good togetherness and results or series don't really affect us," the 24-year-old left-armer told reporters.

"We've shown that in the recent Test series against Pakistan and also against Sri Lanka. OK, the one-day series didn't go as well as we'd like - but then we came back in the Test series and did well.
"So it does show that things like that don't affect us and everyone is highly motivated and very much looking forward to the Ashes.’’

England open the tour with a match against the Prime Minister's XI in Canberra on November10. The first Test begins in Brisbane on November 23.