Australia won the second Test yesterday just as they had seemed destined to do since the opening salvo put England on the canvas. Having bowled England out for 191 in the second innings, they required only 64 to win and managed it by seven wickets. The game finished 1 1/2 hours after lunch, near enough halfway through the scheduled contest; goodness knows what the cost in lost contracts will be to the ground authority.

In the end it was the Waugh twins Mark and Steve who saw their side home but not before Darren Gough, Alan Mullally and Alex Tudor had given the opposition something to ponder before the third Test begins in Adelaide on Friday week.

Each took a wicket as Australia slumped to 36 for three, and prompted the question as to what might have happened had England batted better in the first innings, held catches and made another hundred runs in the second.

Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick had taken their sixth-wicket partnership to 91, the highest of the match, before Hick was caught at third slip off Jason Gillespie's third ball of the day for 68, the game's top score.

Gillespie then embarked on a mopping-up exercise that saw him finish off the innings with a spell of four wickets for one run in six deliveries, giving him five for 88 in all, which was quite a comeback after his mauling by Hick on Sunday evening.

While the tail collapsed ignominiously in the face of some fiery bowling, Ramprakash held firm and after 41/2 hours had reached 47 not out when Mullally, a batsman trying hard to make Glenn McGrath seem like Sachin Tendulkar by comparison, backed away timidly and was bowled by a full toss.

So the psychological and actual advantage rests with Australia, who will move on to Adelaide knowing that, as the holders, one more win would secure them the Ashes for two more years, whereas England need to win two of the last three games and avoid defeat in the other; and they know that the two venues Australia feared would be the most difficult for them are gone.

England can take some comfort from the fact that the series is following a pattern not unlike that last summer when they came from behind to snatch a series win over South Africa. It is not impossible that they will do the same again, just extremely unlikely.

England began the day on 126 for five, two runs shy of an innings defeat. Airline schedules were being scanned, hotel bookings checked. But such had been the exhilaration of Hick's batting the previous evening that thoughts had turned to 1981 and another game turned by counter-attack when there was nothing to lose. This time it was not to be.

Hick's fluency was not quite what it had been and although he rattled along, reaching his half-century from only 54 balls, boundaries were becoming more involuntary. Finally, after 40 minutes' play, Gillespie replaced McGrath at the River End and made the breakthrough, as Hick, like many of his team-mates, tried to force off the back foot and edged to Ricky Ponting at third slip.

Hick's innings was a genuine do-or-die effort from a fellow in his seventh Test reincarnation and batting at number seven who, having dropped a couple of catches and made a second-ball nought in the first innings, believed there was little to lose and everything to gain from going down with all guns blazing.

In so doing he may just have saved his Test career again. Due to go home this week, had Graham Thorpe's back not given up on him, he will now stay with the party for the rest of the winter.

Meanwhile, Ramprakash had been doing what he now does regularly, which is to occupy the crease and gather runs assiduously and in no great haste, like a keen philatelist collecting stamps at auction rather than in a ram-raid on a post office.

The loss of Hick signalled the beginning of the end, however.