Blunt meeting restored England’s confidence, says Alastair Cook

Few England players will have taken part in a cricketing occasion as big as this, with a world-record crowd of 91,000 expected for the opening day of the Fourth Test.

Should England win, they would take a 2-1 lead in the series with one match to spare and would ensure they returned from Australia with the Ashes for the first time since 1987.

For England to achieve this, though, they must play far better than they did at the WACA. Australia levelled the series with a 267-run victory as their four-man pace attack exposed the England batsmen's vulnerability on fast, bouncy wickets.

The MCG groundsman Cameron Hodgkins is believed to be trying to recreate the Perth conditions in Melbourne but England vice-captain Cook believes the team's minds are now clear after they held a forthright discussion in their Perth hotel.

"We had a good, honest meeting after the game and we talked about a few things," said Cook, who remains his team's leading run-scorer in the series despite his two failures at the WACA. "The group we have created here, with Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss, is so stable that we feel very comfortable doing that.

"We put Perth to bed and now we go to Melbourne as a confident side, which I think we can do because of what we have achieved on this tour. Australia won the last game, so people will talk about momentum and say that they have it. But we all know that when we start in Melbourne, it is a clean slate. Whoever adapts to the conditions in Melbourne and plays the best cricket will win. It has nothing to do with momentum."

Having scored 517 for one in the second innings in Brisbane, and 620 for five in the innings victory in Adelaide, England's assured batting disappeared at the WACA as they were twice hustled out for less than 200, with the reborn Mitchell Johnson claiming nine wickets in the match.

Before the Third Test, Cook had scored 450 runs in three knocks and was one of four members of England's top six to average more than 100 in the series.

Both the statistics and the self-esteem of the tourists' batsmen have been dented but Cook insists they are resilient enough to overcome this setback.Cook revealed: "As a batting unit, we took a little bit of a confidence hit at the WACA. But we have only to look at what we did in Adelaide. We scored a lot of runs against this Australian attack, so we have to remain confident.

"First and foremost, we have to trust ourselves, and our training methods over the next few days are important to that."

England will not begin practising again until Christmas Eve, with Australia starting their preparations for the Test a day earlier. After seven weeks on tour, England coach Flower has decided that rest would be more valuable to the side than extra training.

The team will also visit The Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne on Thursday morning to give out presents, before attending a Christmas function alongside the Australians in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, the Aussies' decision to switch to a pitch more likely to favour their pace attack has caused consternation among England followers, but Cook claimed he expected nothing less.

The Australians were unimpressed last summer when groundsman Bill Gordon produced a turning wicket for the final Test at The Oval, which England won to secure the series 2-1 and take the urn.

Yet they are now doing the same, with the more hostile of the drop-in pitches — surfaces prepared away from the playing arena before being installed before he game — preferred for the Test. The late change means the surface for the Boxing Day Test will be far livelier than the one England used during their recent tour match against Victoria at the MCG, yet Cook remains untroubled.

He said: "You'd expect everyone to do it. That is the beauty of home conditions, isn't it? You can prepare a pitch to hopefully suit the home side. That is what we try to do in England in certain cases. There is no reason I would expect Australia not to do it.

"The pitch is out of our control. Conditions change from week to week and it is how you adapt to them that determines how successful you are.

"If you went to India, they played three spinners and produced a green seamer you'd be wondering what was going on, so that is what home advantage is and you'd expect everyone to do it. As a batsman, you would obviously rather have wickets that are flatter than the one in Perth, and we were outplayed there, but we have a good record at home at Old Trafford, which is a fast, bouncy wicket."

Melbourne Cricket Club chief executive Stephen Gough was also keen to stress that the move to change pitches was made before the Test began at the WACA last week.

He said: "I am glad we made the decision early. I'd hate to think if we had released if after Perth whether anyone would think we were up to something. I am not surprised with the conspiracy theory, given the success in Perth."