The Australian team will try valiantly to ignore the elephant in the corner when it departs on Friday for the ICC Champions Trophy tournament in India.
Despite the exploding hype around the Ashes series that begins next month, and even as he donated memorabilia to the Ashes exhibition, bowling spearhead Brett Lee insisted the players were concentrating only on the first tournament ahead.
"You just have to focus on the job at hand," Lee said. "The Champions Trophy is one we have never won and that is our most important series coming up. Then we will come home and focus on the Ashes after that."
Lee, 29, is now shaping as the face of Australia's Ashes campaign after his dominant performance at the one-day tournament in Kuala Lumpur last month, his first hitout after a five-month break.
It is a remarkable reversal of fortune, coming just 18 months after Lee had been reduced to a fringe player, struggling to win a place in the Test team. He has not forgotten that and is determined to reinforce his position in every match.
"Eighteen months ago I couldn't get a game for Australia," he said. "I have worked very hard on my game since then and I am very happy now to be leading the attack for Australia.
"It's a matter of continuing that and building momentum.
"I am feeling really good. It was great to have the rest. I was mentally and physically exhausted after the last season, but I am jumping out of my skin now."
Lee is now so integral to the Ashes series that he cut the cake in front of the Opera House to mark 100 days to go to the Ashes, and yesterday (51 days to go) contributed a signed poster to an exhibition that will open at the Museum of Sydney on October 21, with the Ashes urn as its centrepiece.
The poster features a painting of Andrew Flintoff consoling Lee after he fell just two runs short of rescuing the Edgbaston Test for Australia during last year's Ashes series in England.
That gesture has become the defining image of what is widely regarded as the greatest Ashes contest in history.
"To lose by just two runs and get so close and have Andrew Flintoff come and console me, put his arm around me and say what a fantastic Test match it was, to me that's what the Ashes is all about," Lee said. "This promises to go down in history as one of the greatest Ashes series. The last one had everything, the only thing it didn't have was Australia retaining the Ashes. It's a wonderful opportunity and I am really happy that Andrew Flintoff will be out there and the Australian public can see one of the best all-rounders the game has seen."
Lee also expects to see his bowling partner Glenn McGrath in full flight, despite question marks over the 36-year-old's ability to return to his peak after an absence from international cricket.
"A champion bowler and a star bowler doesn't lose his form over a year or six months out," Lee said.
Lee said it would be to the team's benefit to spend the next month in India, away from the intense domestic focus on the Ashes series.
- NICOLE JEFFERY