England vice captain Andrew Strauss threw down the gauntlet at Australia ahead of the Ashes series starting Thursday, saying that the world champions would be under pressure to lay their hands on the coveted urn.
"Before the last series we felt we had something to prove. I do not think we feel that now," Strauss was quoted as saying in Herald Sun.
"We go in there with our heads high and know that if we play the sort of cricket we can play, we can cause Australia problems. That is a fantastic level of confidence to have going into the series," he said.
England would be looking to defend cricket's most famous prize for the first time in 17 years.
However Strauss, dismissed suggestions the pressure of retaining the Ashes would be too much for his side.
"Australia are desperate to get their hands on the Ashes again," he said.
"They have been the No. 1 team in the world. If anything, the pressure is on them to grab them off us.
"We have a hell of a lot of good memories from that last Ashes series to draw from. We came across a way of beating Australia in England and we know how to do it."
{{/usCountry}}"We have a hell of a lot of good memories from that last Ashes series to draw from. We came across a way of beating Australia in England and we know how to do it."
{{/usCountry}}"We know we have to play very good cricket to do that. If we do it as well as we did last time, there is no reason why the result will be any different," he said.
"We made uncharacteristic errors (last time). Maybe it was because we built the series up so much, we wanted to win it and didn't let our natural games come," Gilchrist said.
"We gave England a lot of opportunities in that series to press home their advantage and they took full control of it. We have got to get back to playing good, hard, tough, uncompromising Test cricket.
"We are not giving our opponents a chance to get back into the game," he said.