The Ashes 2013: England will have their work cut out to beat Australia, as predictions of a whitewash look foolish Sadly I was not there to watch county cricket, though. Yes, coverage of county cricket has dwindled, and that is sad, but it does not diminish its importance as a nursery and there are now probably more means of accessing county coverage than ever before. It is not all doom and gloom. I was there to interview Australia's opening batsman Ed Cowan, who is piggybacking some pre-Ashes practice with Nottinghamshire. Whatever anyone says, this summer, cricket-wise anyway, is all about the Ashes. You can build up the Champions Trophy - and, yes, it will be fun and better than a World Cup because of its brevity. And you can build up the forthcoming New Zealand series after their unexpectedly dogged resistance in the recent home series. But we await the Ashes like nothing else. The words are already flowing. I went to speak to Cowan along with the man from The Mail on Sunday. Cowan mistook him initially for the man from the Daily Mail. He asked: "Are you the one who said we'd lose 5-0?" It was in reference to an article that had appeared on announcement of the Ashes touring party. Was Cowan miffed? He did not seem it, explaining that his Nottinghamshire colleague and soon-to-be Ashes opponent Graeme Swann had been joking about it that day in the dressing room. And he even praised the cricketing press in this country. "I think the game is covered significantly better here," he said, "but if you are on the inside you don't really learn much, particularly back home. So I've stayed away from reading anything. I hope he did not read this on Twitter then, because I will freely admit that I tweeted this last New Year's Eve: "In 2013 we've got nine Ashes Tests and we probably won't lose one." And it was not the drink talking. But I am not thinking so optimistically about the Ashes now. Before the last Ashes tour Down Under I had used this column to write a tongue-in-cheek piece about the lack of peril England should expect. The series would just be good preparation for the arrival the following summer of the No1-ranked side in the world, India, I wrote. To me England were obviously superior to Australia. Now they are not, despite Australia's well-documented travails of late. Things do change. Goodness, Derbyshire are even in the first division. Yes, they may be struggling, but when I asked Cowan about the difference between first- and second-division cricket (he played for Gloucestershire last year), he described it as "infinite." Derbyshire must be doing something right. Beware everyone, beware. This Ashes series will not be easy.