Kevin Pietersen is Little Miss Sunshine right now: everything looks rosy. The England dressing room is happy and excited about the Ashes, the new captain and team director are “fantastic” to work with, Mitchell Johnson won't be a threat and - best of all - Pietersen has a smile on his face and no pain in his Achilles tendon.

Pietersen was in buoyant mood as he revealed that the leg and back injuries that kept him out of England's opening match in the World Twenty20 have gone. “Three weeks ago, I couldn't get down the stairs,” he said. “I never thought my Ashes would be over but it was the first injury I've had when I've not known when I would play again.”

However, his rehabilitation programme appears to have worked. “Now I wake up every single morning absolutely fine,” Pietersen said. “I'm doing all my exercises pain-free.”

Perhaps it was not the wisest thing, then, for the ECB to agree that Pietersen could enter a boxing ring with James DeGale, the Olympic middleweight champion, as part of an event for Vodafone, their sponsor, but the batsman emerged unscathed.

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Such bonding activities are important with a high-pressure series round the corner and Pietersen said that the team had fully recovered from a fractious winter in which he and Peter Moores left their jobs as captain and head coach. “The team is so happy, everyone knows how excited we are and how everyone's gelled,” he said. “That's the reason I did what I did [lobby against Moores] in January. The team wasn't happy, things weren't right and England cricket was going nowhere. If things hadn't changed, I wouldn't have been as confident as I am now.

“This team has done well enough in the last six months to challenge Australia. Fair dos to both Andys [Strauss, the captain, and Flower, the team director], they've been absolutely fantastic.”

One of the interesting battles this summer will be between Pietersen and Johnson, the Australia left-arm fast bowler who has taken 94 wickets in 21 Tests. Pietersen said that Johnson is “a much improved character and a good cricketer”, but had a warning for Australia fans.

“To bowl on wickets in Australia and South Africa is a very different story to bowling in England,” he said. “There's a few bowlers out there who know that the faster you bowl in England the farther you can go.

“Left-armers pose a threat if the ball is swinging; if it doesn't, then he doesn't pose much of a threat. Left-armers bowling into your ribs is quite nice: there are lots of areas where you can score. It's the ball swinging into your stumps that's the problem.”

¤¤England will stage two Test matches and two Twenty20 internationals between Pakistan and Australia in July 2010. Pakistan, who are unable to host matches at present, will also play four Tests against England next summer. “The passion of support for their team in England [for the World Twenty20, which Pakistan won last weekend] demonstrated why this country is an ideal venue,” Giles Clarke, the ECB chief executive, said.