Misplaced though it is, Australia still seems to look for confirmation of its cricketing worth, lately its supremacy, in contests against England. By clinching the Ashes for another two-and-a-half years on the first day of the Southern hemisphere summer, it has been most emphatically affirmed again.
In less than 11 complete days of Test cricket, 24 days since the once-esteemed series began, the rout was over. That there will now be an interval of one-day matches before formalities are completed with the Boxing Day and New Year's Tests in Melbourne and Sydney should be a relief to everyone, but most particularly England. The impression given was that England really set themselves for this series, not genuinely believing they had a chance to win, perhaps, but capable of giving a good account of themselves. That this earnestly seemed to be the prevailing attitude only made the crushing defeat more devastating.
England's campaign was virtually undermined by injury before it even began. The injury situation has not been credible. Vaughan, Flintoff and Gough carried their problems into the tour and for that management can be blamed. But Jones, Crawley, Giles, Caddick and Silverwood? It defies belief. To top it off, replacement player Alex Tudor was brutally felled ducking into a Lee bouncer and had to be stretchered off, moments before the end. "Retired hurt" would have been quite appropriate for the series-clinching wicket, considering the circumstances.
Speaking to Channel 9 immediately after the third Test defeat, Hussain used the words "battered, bruised, broken" to describe England's situation. He looked shattered himself, as well he might after suffering a second innings defeat in a week, but the toss in the first Test aside, it makes no sense to blame Hussain for another failed campaign. He's had little control over the series' destiny.
Only some fight with the bat by Hussain -- who received a bad decision in the second innings and quite possibly the first -- Key and Stewart took the match as far as its ninth session. Had Warne held Hussain at slip first ball -- the Australians have missed numerous difficult chances and, in this case, an easy one -- England would have lost 4/1 in 20 balls, been 5/34, and momentum would surely have ensured a capitulation.
It was, as usual, a team effort. Bar the not out McGrath, all the Australian batsmen scored between 19 and 71, a consistent showing on a Perth wicket that always gave fast bowlers a chance. By comparison, the top four in England's second innings could not make 21 between them, but by then the cause was doomed anyway.
Whatever the case, some of England's players have
Paradoxically, it's at the top where concern should really lie, not with England's lack of competitiveness. It's been too long since the last great series was played between Australia and India in 2001, and it's since been shown that the next two best sides in most people's minds, South Africa and Pakistan, can't be relied on to provide it.
It is a telling indication of how much the Australians really crave a contest that Steve Waugh's ultimate goal is still winning in India, the one lure that would motivate him to keep playing. To ensure credit wasn't deflected from their achievements, for a time the Australians seemed to defensively cling to the pretense that they had to work hard for their wins, which they claimed were not as inevitable as they appeared to observers. Probably, it was true. The Tests against Pakistan in Sharjah, however, seemed to be the catalyst that altered that sentiment, when playing in front of an empty stadium they perhaps realised how unappealing Test cricket would be were it to become farcically one-sided.
The tune has since changed. Waugh admitted after the third Test Australia would prefer to play opponents who get stuck in and made it tough to win, telling the Sydney Morning Herald: "I don't want to sound big-headed, but some of the victories have been a little easy."
This admission has also been reflected by other players, with Matthew Hayden writing for the UK's Daily Telegraph that after the pride and satisfaction at a job well done, "the main feeling to strike me is one of simple disappointment."
"Truthfully, instead of us being pushed hard for the prize and gaining pleasure from that, it has been a no-contest. We believed we would hammer England and we have done just that," Hayden wrote.
In his column for the BBC, opening partner Justin Langer tried to maintain the traditional line, responding to the question of how bad England were by pointing out "the contest in the middle is never as easy as it looks and secondly we are playing extraordinary cricket." Even so, in likening the series to a heavyweight battle he wrote that "for three Tests we danced around the ring, throwing a flurry of punches at our opponent."
For a team so passionate about winning, these sentiments are significant, and just go to show that great series are mostly made by the form and fortunes of the present, and can't be artificially manufactured. As sportsmen, it's difficult not to believe they would derive more from a classic series, even in defeat, than a glorified Ashes walkover.
Former Wisden editor Matthew Engel is right in writing for the Guardian that English cricket should not judge itself on its performances against Australia, for it does not offer a realistic perspective. Similarly, Australia should not build up its ego on wins against England, because it reveals little about them. The difficulty is finding a touring opponent that does.