The thing is, people have talked about how England have just been "off their game" for four of their last five series. Maybe it's actually something more than that?
I don't think we played anywhere near our best cricket in NZ and the Kiwis played very well and were no doubt the better side over the 3 tests. That's the only series I'll say were we were "off our game".
India - Excellent performance with both bat and ball.
South Africa - Are simply a much better side than Eng and beat us.
West Indies - Those writing Broad and Bresnan off should look back at this series. Both were excellent and this was less than 12 months ago.
Sri Lanka - Hard to really judge how they went here.....hate 2 test series. Terrible in the first, dominant in the second. If there was a third test and we won it, it would have been a good series performance.......if we'd have lost it, it would have been poor. Juries out on this one for mine.
Pakistan - Terrible. But undone by some unbelievably great spin bowling. It is easy to forget how well our bowlers went in this series though......they certainly did their job.
So all this leads me to believe that whilst we aren't a great side by any means and certainly not as strong as 2010/11.......we certainly shouldn't be concerned with our opposition this summer.
Edit:
My apologies, that last sentence had some Aussieesque arrogance about it!!
What I obviously mean is that we will rightly be favourites going into both series, if we play anywhere close to our potential then we will win. But having said that both NZ and the Aussies are capable of taking advantage if we are off our game and not up for the contest.