England assemble in Perth but Ashes practice leaves locals cold

The Test team have arrived but early preparation appears a little underwhelming with 10 days until the series starts

- Simon Burnton

Just beyond the boundary’s edge, a cockatoo flew into the hole in a eucalyptus tree where it is nesting. Beyond that, the Swan River flowed. Galahs, chests as pink as those any number of Englishmen will be sporting in a couple of weeks’ time, snuffled on the grass. Other birds flitted around the park, even those with less eye-catching plumage sporting eye-catching names: black-faced cuckooshrikes; willie wagtails. Um, ducks.

Given that they visited Wellington’s Basin Reserve, Christchurch’s Hagley Oval and the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui at various stages during their white-ball tour of New Zealand, it is tempting to conclude that England have arranged their various stopping points of the winter on aesthetic rather than sporting grounds. Even in this company, though, Lilac Hill stands tall.

The park, where England will play the Lions on Thursday in their only Ashes warm-up, sits at the northern edge of picturesque Guildford, perhaps the prettiest of all Guildfords, founded in 1829 on a small smear of land between the Swan and Helena rivers and named less in tribute to the Surrey original than to its former MP, James Mangles, who happened to be the father-in-law of the person doing the naming. You could say it looks good enough to eat, which is what the sprawling city of Perth appears to be doing to it.