Marcus North's resolute and unbeaten century on Ashes debut showed that he is made of the right stuff for a battle of that magnitude, and confidently shut out any notions that Andrew Symonds deserved to be there. As explosive as Symonds was as a batsman who could bowl useful medium pace and spin when fit, Australia is far better off with North in the team than the troubled Queenslander, writes Malcolm Conn in the Australian.

North's quiet maturity and wealth of first-class experience is a stabilising influence on a young and developing team largely devoid of the stars who carried Australia for a decade or more. The importance of North, the captain of Western Australia, is far more significant than his modest international profile.

And it's difficult to imagine him arguing with Michael Clarke, let along throwing wine in his national vice-captain's face, as Symonds did on last year's tour of the West Indies. Increasingly, Symonds was a distraction who was bad for a young side building its own culture and identity.

In the Sydney Morning Herald Peter Roebuck says all the hype about 2005 has led England astray.

Take their hairy-chested batting on the opening day. Here was an attempt to recapture the epic spirit. To that end, the batsmen played a wider range of shots than the pitch permitted. Sophia Gardens had provided an all-too familiar pitch, slow and low and hardly changing as the days went by. It was a time for application, even attrition. Yet the locals batted in a gung-ho style, with vivid drives, edges onto the stumps and so forth. The focus on Kevin Pietersen's dismissal was overdone. Was his ill-advised sweep the only poor shot of the innings?

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