'We'll take Australia's blueprint and put them under pressure'

England fast bowler Mark Wood on the plan of attack for what may be his final Ashes, his 'strange' summer and why he's looking forward to a hostile reception in Perth

- Donald McRae

"My dad would be Australia and I'd be England," Mark Wood says with a wry smile when remembering his first Ashes Tests as a boy in his back garden in Ashington, Northumberland.

"I'd try to copy Darren Gough, Andrew Caddick, Matthew Hoggard and, later, Jimmy Anderson, who I'd go on and play with. My dad, who didn't do the actions so well, had to be Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Shane Warne. He was most proud of his Gillespie but his Warne wasn't great."

Wood snorts at the idea that his dad, Derek, might have let him win most of those matches. "No, no, no. It was proper cricket. You had to give each other lbw and every time I hit my dad in the leg he'd be going: 'No, that's going over' or 'That's down the leg side.' I was like: 'Dad, that was plumb.' I had to get my DRS right."

He laughs before pointing out that his dad had been a decent batter who played a high level of club cricket. "Back in the day they played against some pretty good professionals. He still talks about facing Courtney Walsh and Ian Bishop. In the garden, we'd bowl to each other from 16 yards away with these little Incrediballs. We did that for years until, when I was 14, I bounced my dad and hit him on the head. At that point he thought: 'This is a bit much ..."

That mention of Wood's extreme pace is a timely reminder that we are less than three weeks from an intriguing Ashes series. The first Test, in Perth, begins on 21 November and England plan to bombard Australia with a bowling attack full of bounce, hostility and raw speed.