Alastair Cook has said that England are the favourites ahead of the upcoming Ashes series Down Under.

Darren Lehmann's side will be looking to get their hands on the urn for the first time since completing a 5-0 whitewash in 2007, as the Three Lions have triumphed in the three since, in 2010, 2011 and last summer.

"When you have won the last three series, and the last series was just two months ago, I think that is a fair description," the 28-year-old captain told reporters.

"I don't think it makes that much difference who is favourite, that last summer it was the first time we've gone into an Ashes series as favourites, I thought we coped with that pretty well, and the outcome certainly suggested we did.

"Winning in Australia is no mean feat, that's the challenge we've got ahead of ourselves. We know what we need to do if we want to win, it consists pretty simply of scoring big first innings runs and applying a lot of pressure with the ball and restricting scoring rates."

England beat Australia 3-1 in the last series Down Under, which was the first time that they had won there since 1987.