Ravi Bopara says a partisan Edgbaston can help England recover from Kevin Pietersen's injury blow.
Ravi hopes to recreate Lord's atmosphere
Well it was a pretty exciting Test match to be involved in at Lord's to say the least!
You could argue that the game was still in the balance going into the fifth day and it was great to play in front of another capacity crowd at the home of cricket.
Andrew Strauss led from the front at the start of the game with a great hundred and then we managed to roll Australia for a below par score.
Although we had to get through some tough moments in our second innings, we came to the party later on that third day and played some excellent positive cricket to effectively take the match out of Australia's hands.
On day four, after early wickets, Australia dug in and it was good timing when we eventually came off for bad light towards the end of the day. It gave us chance to freshen up and regroup for day five. No one has ever knocked off 500 before in Test cricket and we were pretty confident that something would happen early on and we'd be back amongst the wickets.
As it was, Fred gave us the perfect start and performed superbly, well backed up by our other bowlers. Fred bowled for well over an hour at 90mph plus and that kind of sustained spell in extremely uncomfortable for batsmen all over the world. He thoroughly deserved his five wickets and man of the match award.
Opportunity
The news that KP has been ruled out of the series is obviously disappointing, both for him and the team. We've not had time to get together yet and speak about it but to lose one of the best batsmen in the world is naturally a blow.
It does create an opportunity for another batsman to make his mark on the series, with Ian Bell being talked about in the papers as the man that will fill KP's berth.
As for me, I'm going to spend the next few days chilling out and doing stuff I enjoy to completely switch off. I'll be going to the cinema and generally taking it easy before we meet at Edgbaston and switch on again to prepare for the third Test match.
Noisy
I've got good recent memories from this ground after scoring a hundred in England's warm up match versus Warwickshire last month.
The crowd at Edgbaston are renowned for being extremely partisan and noisy and I can't wait for the atmosphere on Thursday.
When they get behind you it makes such a difference and makes the hairs on your neck stand on end. In a Test match, there are obviously going to be periods of the game which may feel a little flat, but the crowd will no doubt keep us going through this.
Although cricket is all over the back pages and front pages at the moment, as players we have to remember that this is just another game and get some perspective on the series.
Obviously there are massive consequences between winning and losing but we'll just be focused on the next day, the next session, and the next delivery. The winning feeling felt brilliant at Lord's and we'll be busting a gut to get another taste of that at Edgbaston.
Cheers, Ravi
