Kings of swing need to get back in the groove

England's seamers are still at a loss to explain their inability to swing the ball in the first Ashes test but are quietly confident they will get some movement when the second match starts in Adelaide on Friday.

One of the keys to England's surprise Ashes series win last year was their uncanny knack of making the ball reverse swing early in the innings, especially to Australia's left-handers.

Australia's batsmen had a field day in last week's opening test in Brisbane when the ball went as straight as a line, piling on more than 800 runs in the match for the loss of just nine wickets.

"If you could tell me why the ball swings and doesn't swing I'd be very pleased because it's a very vague science," said seamer Matthew Hoggard.

"Sometimes you look over and it's overcast and muggy and you think it's going to swing and it doesn't and other times you rock up and it's bright blue skies and it swings.

"The vagueness of the science into why the ball swings and why it doesn't is something that goes over my head."

Hoggard did manage to extract some swing in the second innings in Brisbane by which time the match was already out of England's reach but says he is confident of finding some movement earlier in Adelaide.

"Last time we played it swung a little bit. I've been talking to (former Australian test batsman) Darren Lehmann, who says it reverses here so we'll look after the ball and see if we can get some conventional and reverse," he said.

"We're going to have to put in a lot of patience, we're going to have to put the pressure back on the batsmen and make them work hard for their runs.

"We've looked at the areas where we need to improve and hopefully can put the plans into action come Friday."