CRICKET/Ashes Test Series:After hanging on to them for just 15 months, the shortest of reigns since first the urn was given to Ivo Bligh in 1883, England handed the Ashes back to Australia two balls after lunch on the final day here yesterday.
Two wickets late on the fourth evening had scotched any idea of chasing successfully the 557 to win or of batting out time, and after Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff had added some lustre to the morning with a brief display of power hitting, Shane Warne, with a little help from Stuart Clark and an alert captain in Ricky Ponting at silly-point, wrapped up things with three of the last five wickets.
The defeat, by 206 runs, goes with those by 277 runs in Brisbane and six wickets in Adelaide, each sufficiently comprehensive to be deemed overwhelming.
If this is not the best Australian team of the past decade or so then it is still a very, very fine one, "team" being the operative word: they deserve all their success.
Warne will now go to Melbourne for the next Test requiring either one wicket or, if you are a member of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, seven more, to reach 700 (unlike the International Cricket Council, whose game it was, the association does not recognise the Super Test nonsense in Sydney last year).
One suspects, though, that as the international game is not run by statisticians or indeed Wisden, his first wicket in front of 100,000 people at the MCG, his home ground, might get some fleeting acclaim before play moves on.
The Australians, perfectly understandably, cavorted their celebrations to all points of the Waca, so the defeated England captain, who had brought his men on to the outer, thought better of it and took them back inside. It will hurt Flintoff deeply, not just that his team lost but that he was not able to do more about it.
There is a lot of guff talked about targeting leaders, as if the opposition are sharpshooters in the rigging of a man o' war. But Flintoff for the moment has lost the art of wicket-taking - whether or not it has to do with his ankle, only he and his medical advisers know - while his batting has gone to pot. He blazed yesterday for an hour and a half, but that was less pure batting than the last clarion call.
If the result adds weight to the argument of those that have said it was always going to prove too much for him, then it is still hypothetical to suggest that anyone else in charge, with the exception of Michael Vaughan, would have made much difference to the outcome, and even then England's great strength in 2005, their pace bowling, had been depleted by injury and form so that it became vulnerable.
The same to a large extent goes for selections, although Monty Panesar may have made a difference in Adelaide, and he brings joie de vivre. Geraint Jones kept wicket more than adequately, but failed to get runs, or even, at the last, a run at all, getting his first Test nought in the first innings, and repeating it in the second.
With the series lost and two matches to play, this may have been his Test finale.
If not the Ashes, Australia held most of the cards leading into the series. England's Ashes-winning team had been riven by injury. Then there was the preparation, which was inadequate, most judges agree, but to a considerable extent was dictated by the ICC's demanding Future Tours programme. Extra warm-up matches are not necessarily a panacea - last time there were three state matches before the first Test and still England were hammered, in three days at that - but they sort out form and fitness.
If the Champions Trophy was an interference after an extremely full year, then either Duncan Fletcher should have sent the whole Ashes squad to play and then come straight on to Australia, or sent a second side, hang the consequences, and come to Australia earlier anyway.
As it was, the brief return to England for those who were in India was a joke.
Australia last played a Test match at the start of April, and will not contest another, apart from two Tests proposed in Zimbabwe in June, until Sri Lanka arrive for two in late November, followed by India. Thus in that 19-month period, Australia will have had nine Tests to England's 22. Reverse the commitment and Australia's ageing cricketers might have struggled.
In Test-match terms, England must now plan the way forward, towards a campaign at home to win the Ashes back again. There are good things to emerge from this series to lend confidence that the situation can be rectified. In two summers, Alastair Cook and Ian Bell should be batsmen of world class, along with Pietersen, who already is, and Andrew Strauss, who is almost. Paul Collingwood might just continue his progress to become one of England's best troubleshooters.
The bowling will have moved on: Ashley Giles has gone now, and with him by then will be Steve Harmison, who got better as the series moved on, proving the futility of protecting him from the hard work he needs for rhythm, thereby doing neither him nor his team any favours.
Simon Jones in all probability will also have departed and, sad to say, one suspects Flintoff will join them, his ankle unable to take the strain of his job. For him, the unthinkable conundrum is whether he would be good enough as a batsman alone to get in the side: consensus would suggest probably not.
But to the names of Matthew Hoggard, twice the bowler he was two years ago, Panesar, and if he progresses as is hoped, Sajid Mahmood, may well be added Stuart Broad. The wicketkeeping will change forthwith - it is significant that neither of the wicketkeepers on this tour has a central contract - and if Steve Davies of Worcester is the name in the frame, then James Foster is more experienced now than when he first played for England.
The end was swift yesterday, once Flintoff had been yorked by Warne for 51, the last five wickets falling for 14 runs in little more than seven overs.
It left Pietersen, 51 when Flintoff was out, high and dry on 60, a depressing situation for the best batsman in the side.
ScoreboardFinal Day
Australia v England
Overnight: Australia 244 (M E K Hussey 74 no; M S Panesar 5-92, S J Harmison 4-48) and 527-5 dec (M J Clarke 135 no, M E K Hussey 103, A C Gilchrist 102 no, M L Hayden 92, R T Ponting 75). England 215 (K P Pietersen 70) and 265-5 (A N Cook 116, I R Bell 87).
England: Second Innings:
K P Pietersen not out 60
A Flintoff b Warne 51
G O Jones run out 0
S I Mahmood lbw b Clark 4
S J Harmison lbw b Warne 0
M S Panesar b Warne 1
Extras b11 lb4 w6 nb5 pens 0 26
Total (122.2 overs) 350
Fall: 1-0, 2-170, 3-185, 4-261, 5-261, 6-336, 7-336, 8-345, 9-346.
Bowling: Lee 22-3-75-1; McGrath 27-9-61-2; Clark 25-7-56-2; Warne 39.2-6-115-4; Symonds 9-1-28-0.
Australia beat England by 206 runs.
