Ashes roundtable: Derek Pringle quizzes Shane Warne, Michael Vaughan and Simon Hughes What do we think about the David Warner incident? Has it been an unwanted distraction for Australia and, will it hurt them when the series starts? SW I think they've had plenty of distractions. But as I said at the time, give Warner a fine and get on with it. The penalty they came up with penalised the team. Can Warner play in the first Test at Trent Bridge having played no match cricket for six weeks? SW I'd have him in, batting at three. Some players need lots of batting in the middle but others just need to get their head right, which I'm told he has. MV I don't know his personality, but if he's like Kevin Pietersen, he won't need much batting to feel right. Hitting a ball in the nets, and he will have done plenty of that, will be enough. SH I'll be amazed if Australia pick him but their batting looks thin with Philip Hughes, Usman Khawaja, Ed Cowan and Steve Smith battling for three of the top seven places, so they might pick him. We've seen Australia sides deemed weak before, but usually it is the bowling that seems under par not their batting. SW Our batters have always been pretty dominant so to not have them, or even many promising young ones on the horizon, is a bit of an issue. Someone like Shaun Marsh can play but there used to be many more in reserve like Lehmann, Greg Blewett, Michael Di Venuto. SH Why is that? SW There are more distractions for young people. We used to play outside: cricket in the summer, footie in the winter till Mum shouted supper's ready, but that doesn't happen anymore. SH I spoke to a teacher in Australia who said that in the 1960s there were four main sports played in schools - cricket, Aussie rules, rugby and tennis. Now there are 28 sports including kite surfing. Enough of Australia's education policy: let's discuss the two captains who lead their teams into an Ashes series for the first time. Andrew Strauss said there are unique pressures to the job but just how will it affect them? MV Having batted well against Australia - as Cook did in the last series - it helped me when I took the job. I understood how you needed to play against them - you had to be aggressive with a strong mentality, positive in everything you said and did. Cook will have learnt from the runs he made in 2010‑11. But having said that he's not in great form at the moment and I think Australia's left-armers, Starc and James Faulkner will test him. If the Aussies play those two to get rid of Cook they'll create a lot of rough for Swann with their follow-throughs. New Zealand got Cook out with their left-armers but it meant their batsmen struggled against Swann, so it's a gamble for them. SW Clarke's a strong captain and he likes a gamble. He also has great imagination on the field so expect some interesting fielding positions to England's key players. He's also been the best Test batsmen for the last two years, averaging over 60 with nine hundreds. But he needs someone else to help him. Most people have England as strong favourites but both sides have bowling attacks capable of taking 20 wickets, the most important criterion in winning Test matches. SW If a captain knows his side can bowl the opposition out, that is half the battle. I think Clarke will be fine, as long as he doesn't feel too much responsibility to make all the runs and his back holds up. MV If I was the Aussies I'd get hold of South Africa's stats of their tour here last year and hit England with pace. Steyn, Morkel, Philander and Kallis just banged away at England a good length to wear them down. Obviously you need discipline to be able to control the channel outside off-stump, but that is what South Africa did last year. Shane, you said England couldn't win without Kevin Pietersen. Does that still hold? SW I think I said Australia would win without him, which is different, but KP appears to be fit and in form. He is such a player that when he's in the side, all the other batsmen who aren't leading lights like Cook and Jonathan Trott, grow a leg. Ian Bell gets a lot more confident playing with KP. Will he be ready after just two first-class innings? MV Pietersen is one of a small few who can go out there and play even if he's had three months off. What he does, when he's playing well, is to allow you more time to bowl because he scores so fast. Him and Matt Prior apart, the majority of the England batsmen are solid but can be contained. SH If KP and Prior get going, Clarke will tear his hair out as you can't set fields to them. You usually need your top three batsmen to play well to make big totals in English conditions. Yet both sides have made changes to theirs with Root promoted to open for England, and Watson and Chris Rogers returning to do the job for Australia. SH I think the number three is vital. Shaun Marsh was the last number three to make a hundred for Australia and that was in 2011. Whoever bats there for the Aussies at Trent Bridge will be the seventh player to do so in two years. That's a lot of pressure. MV If the pitch is offering movement, you need a top three who can send a message to the dressing-room that we can score runs on this surface. Anderson is going to pose tough questions so they need to be technically strong and mentally tough. Australia have struggled because number three is so important. Look at Trott - he's so consistent. MV It's more a mental message to the others the No 3 has to send. Over the years Ricky Ponting used to do it brilliantly. On a pitch that was doing a bit he'd lunge forward then get the pull shot out, show the others that runs could be scored. How do you think Joe Root will perform? MV It's always a worry having a new opener, especially a young one, but Root has jumped over every hurdle put in front of him so far. He can cope. He's opened the batting since the age of 10. SW Because they've got a bit of pace and can nip it around, the Aussie bowlers will pitch it up to Root, they won't let him sit on the back foot where he looks comfortable. James Pattinson can bowl 90mph-plus but swings it when he pitches it up - he's a potential superstar. England have picked 13 for Trent Bridge, five of them seamers. That suggests they have issues with the third seamer, which has tended to be either Steve Finn or Tim Bresnan. MV In the Lord's Test against New Zealand Finn was out of synch but at Headingley he proved what a talent he can be by getting steep bounce. If you have Bresnan or Graeme Onions in with Anderson and Broad, they will be too similar. Finn offers something different and he bowls well at left‑handers. SW You've got to play Finn, though he isn't that consistent. SH Finn's worried about only getting that angle across the left‑handers. He strains to get it to leave the right-hander, which is what his knocking the stumps over and the subsequent tinkering with his run-up has all been about. With the very different results of the two teams in India - England winning 2-1 and Australia losing 0-4 - and with the Aussies not having a great spinner like Warney, should England prepare dry pitches that take spin? MV We've seen that already against New Zealand. I've never seen pitches at Lord's and Headingley spin like that at that stage of the season. SW Until these last few days it has been two degrees and raining every day, and somehow the pitches look like eight-day-old Test pitches, they are so dry. MV England will go three seamers and one spinner at Trent Bridge, that's what they know. After that who knows?