Vaughan has clear vision of way ahead for England

It is Melbourne's second hottest day since records began, 44C, pipped only by 45C one absurdly sweltering day in 1939. At the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia have batted through the suffocating heat, mustering 229. It is England's turn to bat, but to nobody's surprise their first three wickets have fallen cheaply. Knight, Trescothick and Irani have each trudged back to the dressing-room with barely 20 runs on the board. In the middle Michael Vaughan joins Nasser Hussain. And Vaughan plays an innings of consummate style, battering the Aussie attack this way and that, until finally Shane Warne outwits him.

Vaughan has scored 60. His innings at the MCG encapsulates his entire tour; personal success, collective failure.

Some 24 hours earlier, in the blissfully air-conditioned hotel lobby, Vaughan, a tall, phlegmatic young man, rises to greet me. As we wander through the lobby to find somewhere quiet to chat, Hussain walks towards us from the Elevator End. An interesting cameo follows. Hussain raises an eyebrow at Vaughan. "Vaughny," he mutters.

Vaughan flares a nostril at Hussain. "Nass," he grunts. These are two men who have been on tour together for three long and mostly difficult months.

They are manifestly weary of each other's company and who can blame them? Vaughan and I sink into two sumptuous armchairs. We are joined by David, the England and Wales Cricket Board's media relations officer, whose job it is, I presume, to ensure that I don't force his man on to the back foot regarding Zimbabwe. Fat chance. Vaughan is frustratingly media-savvy. In cricket terms, he offers no chances. "It's hard enough performing on the pitch without thinking about other issues," he says, and that is the Zimbabwe question, done and dusted.

So we turn instead to matters on the field. Vaughan's achievements down under have been fully documented, but, for any Englishman still trying to come to terms with Australia's domination of international cricket (compounded by their Under-19s and their women's team, both of whom have thrashed England in recent days), they bear frequent repetition.

Vaughan scored 177 in the first innings of the third Test, 145 in the second innings of the fourth Test, and 183 in the second innings of the fifth Test. He has scored seven centuries in his last 12 Tests, which makes him officially the world's second-best batsman, behind Matthew Hayden.

"It's a load of crap," says Vaughan of the rankings. He was not raised in Lancashire and, from the age of nine, Yorkshire, to be flowery with language. "You can never say that. Obviously I've been playing well, but I might get nought in my next innings. You have to stay realistic."

All the same, it takes some doing to be a member of a Test side crushed 4-1 yet to receive the Man of the Series award. I wonder if he can express his ambivalent feelings about a tour which has brought him so much personal glory amid such underachievement as a team?

"To lose 4-1 to Australia is no disgrace," he says quietly. "South African came here last year with a full-strength team and lost 5-0. It is disappointing that we played some good cricket once the Ashes had gone. I don't think it was because they slackened, more because we relaxed. Maybe we put too much pressure on ourselves when we arrived. Although from ball one of the first Test in Brisbane they put us under tremendous pressure. The way Hayden came out and batted on that first day stunned us. You expect a team to get 280 on the first day of a Test match if they're batting well, but not 370. That took a lot out of us.

"For me, the whole thing of Ashes cricket didn't really dawn on me until that first day. It was the first time I'd sung the [national] anthem before a game of cricket. And the dressing-room was as quiet as I'd ever known it. There's usually the odd chirp, a bit of banter, and Nasser did his best, but there were a lot of nerves. I'm usually nervous before I bat, then as soon as it hits the middle I'm fine. But for most of that first game the nerves stayed with me.

"It's the whole build-up, weeks of reading in the media how they're going to bowl at you, how you're going to cope, I'd never experienced anything like that. So all I tried to do in the first Test was to set up my stall to play confidently, and I did. I scored 30-odd and that set the tone. Then the 177 at Adelaide, to stand up against them and hit them around a bit, that was pleasing."

Pleasing is putting it mildly, which Vaughan often does. But 177 was not enough to stave off defeat. "No. We wanted desperately to win the Ashes, and to give them a run for their money, but they just didn't allow us to. It was partly in the mind. A lot of the guys had played against them before, and the only result they knew was being beaten. Even the guys who hadn't played against Australia knew that they beat England on a regular basis. So it was hard both for experienced players and newcomers to gather confidence from the past."

When he puts it like that, I venture, it is hard to see how England will ever regain the Ashes. What would he do, if he were asked to put together a five-year plan? "It's a tough one. Every other team in the world is asking the same question. I think you have to get a nucleus of 20 players and work really hard at the international game. Maybe you have to take your quick bowlers out of county cricket, to work on their fitness in between Test matches, so that, all the overs they're bowling, they're bowling for England.

"At the moment they're picking up too many injuries. And although county cricket does prepare you for Test cricket, the balls are different, the wickets are different, and you can get away with bowling a certain length that would get you absolutely murdered in Test cricket. Basically, we're trying to prepare Test cricketers by playing a different game. I'd like to see better county wickets, which might enable us to produce bowlers who have to work on the ball, work on swing, work on the patient aspect of bowling, rather than just running up and hitting the wicket and letting the wicket do the talking. It's the same with batting. If you're playing on wickets that are always doing tricks, you learn to bat differently.

"And there are too many games in county cricket. We don't get time between county games to work on our skills. If you're in a dodgy spell, you don't have a week to work on it, you have to work on it in the next match, and you can be out first ball.

"Also, we just don't have the facilities at home that they have here. Every ground here has a separate area where if you do get a low score you can go in the nets for an hour. You can't do that at most grounds at home. They've got it perfect over here, they've got a fantastic way of living. I went to visit a school in Perth, next to the WACA, and they were having swimming as one of their lessons. We'd be having history, they were having swimming, all trying to be the next Ian Thorpe. If you want to be a sportsman, you're better off coming out here."

Speaking of lessons, I wonder if mastering Australian bowlers in Australia has taught Vaughan anything about batting? "I don't think so. The wickets do bounce a lot more here, so you've got to be prepared to play a lot of your shots off the back foot, but I've been working on my back-foot play for the last 18 months. In Test-match cricket you have to learn to play consistently well off the back foot, because most balls will be between your hip and your head. There aren't many half-volleys.

"I've worked at that in the nets, but I also do a lot of batting in my head, in my room. Visualisation is as good as having a good net." Ah, visualisation, cricket's buzz word. "Yeah, but I didn't know what it was called until a year ago. A lot of people visualise without realising. I certainly did. Even as a young lad I was always thinking about the next game."

Let us, then, visualise the World Cup. Can we visualise Nasser Hussain holding it aloft? Vaughan smiles. "We can if from the first game we are playing our No 1 team. If you look at the best one-day teams, South Africa and Australia, they've been very settled. They've played together for three or four years while we haven't played together even five games on the trot, because of injuries.

"The sooner we get Flintoff, White, back in the team, and are playing together as a unit, the better it will be, not only for the World Cup but for the future. You need to be a unit to understand the different situations that can arise. And there's a lot of inexperience. Knighty, Tres, Nasser, Stewie, Caddy are all experienced, but the rest of us are very inexperienced in international one-day cricket. I've only played 19 games. But I like it, it's a great format. And it's nice to know I'm at the top of the order.

"Before I was five or six, but I enjoy the new ball. I think we can do well over there. We might be inexperienced, but maybe it's good to be fresh, because we have no history of failure in World Cups."

Freshness is a relative term. Most of the England players have been playing cricket for a year with barely a break, and have not seen England since November. When we met it was still in the balance whether or not they would be allowed to return home for a few days prior to arriving in southern Africa. That was not the case. Clearly, Vaughan wanted to, and obliquely took a swipe at those in the England management set-up who have been saying that the long journey home, followed by another long-haul flight to the World Cup, would be counter-productive.

"I'd be lying if I said we were not feeling jaded. Our first game is on 13 February, which gives us time to recharge our legs and batteries. It should be down to each and every individual to decide what he feels he needs to do to get his mind and body right. Whatever we do, I don't think we'll be staying together."

Has there, I ask, been much friction within the England camp during this epic tour of duty? "It could have been a lot worse. I'm surprised the guys haven't lost their tempers more, to be honest. We've had some tough, tough days, and it could have got to boiling point. Not just the cricket, either.

"It's what you take from the media, and from people in the street as well as in the crowd. The Australian supporters are more abusive than any I've ever played in front of. There's that at-you Aussie thing all the time. You get it on the pitch as well, but I gave it back as good as I got."

He certainly did, in more ways than one. And as the only England cricketer to leave Australia with his reputation greatly enhanced, he now finds himself squarely in the frame to be next England captain. How does he feel about that?

"The job's not available at the minute," he says. "But if Nass does step down then I would like my name to be mentioned."

Michael Vaughan: The life and times

Name: Michael Paul Vaughan

Born: 29 October 1974, Manchester

Lives: Sheffield

Career Highs

1990: Named Daily Telegraph Under-15 cricketer of the year.

1993: Makes his first-class debut for Yorkshire against Lancashire in the County Championship at Old Trafford. Aged 18, he scores 64 runs from 135 balls in the first innings.

1994: Playing for Yorkshire against Oxford University at The Parks, he makes his maiden first-class century, an unbeaten 106 in the game's second innings. He goes on to take four wickets for 39 runs to help the side to a 100-run victory.

1999: Makes his England Test debut in Johannesburg against South Africa. Coming to the crease with the team 2 for 2, which then became 2 for 4 before he faced a ball, he scores an admirable 33 in the first innings of 122. However England lose the match by an innings and 21 runs.

2001: In the first innings of the second Test against Pakistan at Old Trafford, Vaughan scores his maiden Test century. His 120 runs from 223 balls could not stop the tourists from winning by 108 runs.

2002: He scores 615 runs, at an average of 102.5, against India. He scored three centuries in four matches, with his 197 at Lord's being his top score in first-class matches. He also made 195 in the final Test at The Oval.

2002-03: Scoring three centuries in five matches he totals 633 runs, at an average of 63.3, during the Ashes series in Australia. His highest score of the series, 183 in the second innings of the final Test in Sydney, moves him to second position in the Test batting rankings.

He says: "I'm definitely a better player now than when I left England. There's always that question mark against your name when you have never played Australia. I had doubts as well. Until you've played against the best you never know how you're going to react."

They say: "He bats like an Australian." Bill Brown, last surviving member of the 1948 unbeaten Australian Ashes Team

"He is a nice lad, he seems to be in the form of his life and I am delighted for him. Really, really pleased." Geoffrey Boycott

"One of the best performances in Ashes history." Australia captain Steve Waugh

"Even Sachin Tendulkar needs to give him a call." England team-mate Andrew Caddick