Got your New Year resolutions sorted? Me too (must spend less time blogging). But I wonder if the players have… Here are some friendly suggestions.

	Must avoid press conferences © Getty Images

AUSTRALIA
Must remember to give opponents a chance. Declining to bring any bowlers out of retirement should do the trick.

Must stop John Buchanan giving press conferences. It’s one area where he and Duncan Fletcher are as bad as each other – one defensive, the other passive-aggressive.

Must see if they can collapse even more dramatically than at Melbourne and still win. Maybe let things go to 84 for 9 this time.

ENGLAND
Must play an extra batsman. Kevin Pietersen hasn’t been a place too low at number five – the four men after him have been a place too high. Picking Jamie Dalrymple at seven will help, but Andrew Flintoff, in his present lack of form, will still be too high at six. There’s no point playing five bowlers if the captain doesn’t have faith in them.

Must reach 100 with just one wicket down, something they have managed only in the second innings at Perth.

Must be aggressive with the bat and patient with the ball. Just bowl at the top of off stump: as Matthew Hayden helpfully pointed out, that’s all a Test-match bowling plan needs to say.

Must remember how to play overseas. Since the successful tour of South Africa two years ago, their home record reads won 8 (7 if you disregard the Pakistan forfeit), lost 2, while their away record is won 1, lost 7.

Must not publish any more autobiographies until they have the Ashes back.

SHANE WARNE
Must announce his retirement from international hair-replacement ads with immediate effect.

Must agree not to take any more tail-end wickets in this match – they’re beneath him, aren’t they?

ANDREW FLINTOFF
Must bat as if he’s no longer captain.

Must keep smiling, even in defeat – Brett Lee showed the way last year.

Must give Monty Panesar an early bowl and a reasonable field.

	Counties: must not offer a contract to Shaun Tait, Mitchell Johnson, Ben Hilfenhaus or anyone called Cullen until at least 2010 © Getty Images

GLENN McGRATH
Must allow himself to have a tear in his eye, so that he can’t see where he is landing the ball.

Must do something about his batting average. In an age of multi-dimensional cricketers, 7.36 is rubbish. Should aim to finish in double figures, which will mean scoring 237 for once out. If Jason Gillespie can do it …

STEVE HARMISON
Must stand up and think of Durham, grab the new ball and repay all the faith that has been placed in him.

DUNCAN FLETCHER
Mustn’t play the blame game, unless he is prepared to take some of it himself.

Must take the players to a bar afterwards and have a drink with the travelling fans, whose support has been beyond barmy and well into the realms of certifiable.

THE COUNTIES
Must not offer a contract to Shaun Tait, Mitchell Johnson, Ben Hilfenhaus or anyone called Cullen until at least 2010. Exceptions may be made if the state the player represents offers a contract to a young Englishman in return.

JUSTIN LANGER
Must come clean about whether he is retiring. His dad has hinted as much, but that may be just a New Year tradition – an old Langer sign.

Happy New Year.

	Beaten, yes - but not lily-livered © Getty Images

Yes and no. The word has two distinct senses, and the one that strikes us first is synonymous with gutless. Were England lacking courage today as they slumped towards 4-0? I don’t think so. The batsmen weren’t backing away to square leg, or trying to get out. Most of them got stuck in: five of the top seven faced 30 balls or more, just as all of the top six had in the first innings. Most of their opponents didn’t do that.

To be a Test cricketer for any country takes courage: not many of us would fancy facing 90mph bouncers. It also takes commitment. You have to put in years of practice, and do more hanging around than in any line of work outside film-making and war. So accusations of spinelessness, like accusations of racism, should be made very sparingly. Most of these England players have shown grit at other times – the Ashes 2005, Mumbai 2006, Old Trafford 2006. Lily-livered they are not.

The team, however, has been spineless in the other sense of lacking a spine. Test teams need their vertebrae – a solid opening pair, at least one other top batsman, a counter-attacking six and seven, a strong captain, a settled wicketkeeper, and an exacting new-ball pair. Others may join this core according to their gifts and personality – Australia’s backbone obviously incorporates a rather portly legspinner – but these six components are just about essential in most conditions. And one way or another, England have mislaid them.

As openers, Cook and Strauss have been less than the sum of their parts. They keep getting through the first 10 overs, then succumbing, through a mixture of a technical flaws (Cook pushes across the line of standard slanting deliveries), a run of rough umpiring decisions (and yes, Damien Martyn certainly suffered something similar in 2005), plus both men’s inability to find a higher gear. If it was bad luck that England lost Vaughan and Trescothick, it was bad judgment that they didn’t ship in some experience to replace them. The cameo Justin Langer played in Melbourne, kick-starting Australia’s reply, would have been inconceivable from England’s openers.

At least they have the other top batsman, even if he seems at odds with the present regime. It was uncompromising individualism that took Kevin Pietersen to England, so they can hardly be surprised if he shows a bit too much of it now. And the management have done plenty of things that might leave a good player feeling exasperated.

Several of the components come down to Andrew Flintoff’s role. He hasn’t been a strong captain: he relies too much on gut instinct, as he calls it, and not enough on his considerable brain. Not only has he lost his scriptwriter, he doesn’t seem to be directing the movie.

He has barely been up to counter-attacking at six, and Geraint Jones had hardly anything to offer at seven. Bad management in both cases: Flintoff’s batting often takes a lot of de-rusting, and Jones should never have been recalled without finding his form first. Once Steve Harmison went doolally, Flintoff became Matthew Hoggard’s new-ball partner, which was manful of him, but put further strain on his ankle. The case for resting him grows.

So England’s spine is creaking badly. But today’s sad procession was more about good bowling than bad batting. The ball Stuart Clark bowled to Pietersen, a killer nip-backer, was so well timed, it was like a job application for leader of the pack.

England’s failing, as on the last day at Adelaide, was meekness. They hit only 17 fours in the match, in 140 overs. That was partly down to the slow pitch and outfield, and partly to the bowlers’ formidable accuracy, which offered no respite. But the batsmen did little to bother them. Matthew Hayden advanced out of his crease; several England players retreated into theirs. They helped dig their own graves.

But we do need to bear in mind how Australia’s middle order did in this game. I’ll have to Ask Steven if they have ever won a game before with only 18 runs from numbers three, four and five. This was a match won not just by some fiercely disciplined bowling, but by one outstanding partnership, outside of which Australia made 140 for nine. Shane Warne was the man of the moment, but naming him man of the match, when he took only two top-order wickets, was an insult to two musclebound Queenslanders.

	That rarefied beast, the Aussie allrounder © Getty Images

There’s a headline on the BBC site today saying “Same old story”. It’s true that England are once again in a losing position, two sessions after being in a promising one. But as soon as you look at how it happened, there’s nothing same old about it. The way the game turned was new: a different and rather unlikely story.

Twelve wickets fell yesterday, followed by another three this morning. And it could easily have been more: Australia dropped a few catches, probably because of the vile weather, and England had those excellent lbw shouts against Matthew Hayden which Rudi Koertzen, perhaps subliminally influenced by the huge crowd, couldn’t quite bring himself to give. So in the first four sessions, the bowlers created at least 20 chances, and the two teams together scraped 270 for 15. Since then, it has been 261 for two.

What changed? Some of the bowlers got tired – Andrew Flintoff had given his all. The ball got older, and there was no Shane Warne to weave a little hair-replacement magic on it. The fielding was ordinary: somehow, Steve Harmison found himself in the covers early on, where he played the part of a record-company PR man – handing out free singles.

Hayden was well set, and unlike Andrew Strauss, he was able to turn his 50 into something immense. Andrew Symonds blossomed under Hayden’s wing: the Queensland fishing-mates connection visibly helped, and made you rue the fact that England have had no two batsmen from the same county playing in the series. Symonds went from scratchy to domineering in double-quick time, as if he was playing for one of his many counties. England have suffered most forms of violence at Australian hands in the past decade and a half, but here was a new one: being hammered by an Aussie allrounder, a species that had been thought to be mythical, like the Aussie metrosexual. The different story turned out to be a lurid tale of horror: Attack of the Bright Pink Bat Handles.

The pitch had something to do with it too. Drop-in pitches aren’t bad exactly, but they are eccentric. Five years ago in Christchurch, New Zealand, England benefited from this. The pitch started as a minefield and a hundred by Nasser Hussain, a bad-pitch master, was the only score above 45 in either side’s first innings. Going in again with a lead of 80, England slumped to 106 for five, before Graham Thorpe and Flintoff put on 281. Flintoff, just like Symonds, made his first Test hundred. England declared when the lead reached 550 – and very nearly lost the match, as Nathan Astle produced one of the great do-or-die performances, walloping 222 off 168 balls.

This pitch hasn’t flattened out as much as that one did, and the MCG boundaries are not as short, and there was nobody in that scenario like Warne or his scriptwriter. But funny things can happen on drop-in pitches. Poor old England are going to need some tomorrow.

	19 times his bunny:Mike Atherton © Getty Images

You wait ages for a bogeyman’s retirement, then two come along at once. Glenn McGrath is to join Shane Warne in bowing out after these next two Tests. The most prolific fast bowler of all will walk off arm in arm with the most prolific spinner. McGrath may even find that one of his whitewash predictions has finally come true. That would be a hell of a last hurrah, or as he presumably has it, hurrath.

The limelight at the MCG and the SCG will be unprecedentedly bright, turned up by the sentimentality we sports fans are prone to. Sharing it will suit McGrath more than Warne. Warne is a showman, a conjuror and an innovator, whereas McGrath is none of these. He is more of a surgeon - except that surgeons are supposed to make you better.

At his peak, he didn’t so much bowl teams out as disembowel them. He had a particular taste for English and West Indian flesh. The five men he dismissed ten times or more in Tests were Mike Atherton (a ridiculous 19), Brian Lara (a formidable 15), Jimmy Adams, Sherwin Campbell and Alec Stewart. He defeated them not by being clever, although he was, but by being patient, skilful, confident, and exerting immense control. Warne has expanded the possibilities of bowling; McGrath preferred to narrow them down.

His deities were the eternal verities, line, length, lift, and an upright seam. He showed that you don’t need very much movement to catch the edge. He sometimes moved the ball extravagantly, but those deliveries didn’t tend to be the lethal ones. The bulk of his wickets were taken by standard deliveries, aimed at the top of off stump, and doing just enough. He was both a great attacking bowler and a great run-saver, and the reason was that his stock ball was also his danger ball. Along with Richard Hadlee, he was the most clinical of all the top bowlers.

He made a very good Australian team almost unbeatable. Since the start of the 1997 Ashes, they have played 94 Tests with McGrath there, winning 66 and losing only 12. Without him, they have played 25 Tests, winning 15 and losing eight, so when he has been absent injured or tending his sick wife, the win ratio slips from 70 per cent to 60, but more strikingly, the loss ratio leaps from 13 per cent to 32. And the number of draws halves, because even when things were going against his team, McGrath would slow their opponents down.

He is going at the right time from his point of view. There have been intimations of mortality in this series. His six-for at Brisbane was gained mainly on reputation, as England wilted, and since then he has been just a supporting player, taking tidy two-fors. Kevin Pietersen has shown that you can dance down the wicket to him because you know where the ball will land, and McGrath has not taken that indignity well.

From the team’s point of view, the timing is not so hot. Australia famously suffered when Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Greg Chappell all departed together. This is at least as great a loss, because rather than being spread through the team, it’s half the attack going at once, and more than half the threat. Ricky Ponting’s armoury won’t be empty, but it will be normal.

Who will lead the pack now? With Brett Lee going through another of his blunt patches, Stuart Clark is the only bowler who can be sure of a place in Australia’s next Test series, fitness permitting. The new chairman of selectors, Andrew Hilditch, has taken a stern line over Stuart MacGill’s behaviour issues (you wonder what he makes of Warne’s dissent). The next Aussie Test attack could be Clark, Mitchell Johnson, Shaun Tait and Dan Cullen, with Andrew Symonds or Shane Watson in support. Promising, intriguing, but not daunting. Indian fans, whose team go to Australia next Christmas, can raise their hopes a notch.

	Cricket's foremost entertainer © Stamp Publicity (Worthing)

For cricket, it means the end of one of the very greatest careers. Warne has been not just the most prolific bowler of all, but the foremost entertainer of the modern age. He took the neglected, marginal, difficult art of leg-spin, placed it centre stage, and made it look easy. His prodigious spin was just one of several facets of his game that have been phenomenal: his control, his stamina, his sense of drama, his bowling intelligence. He has made the game more interesting.

You could argue forever about whether he is the greatest bowler of all. He may not even be the greatest of his era – you can make a case for Murali, if you take the view, as most umpires and players do, that his action is legitimate. You can make a case for McGrath, who, unlike Warne, was able to maintain his best form wherever he went, including India.

Of the bowlers I’ve seen from further back, Malcolm Marshall was probably just ahead of all the current crop in his sensational ability to combine menace with guile, and Imran Khan was a complete cricketer, a great fast bowler who was also a fine batsman and captain. But Warne has definitely, in my book, been the greatest of all Ashes bowlers. Like Ian Botham, he is a personality player who felt personally about the romance and history of the Ashes. And thus became a major part of that history.

For Warne himself, it means a new life, probably involving more time with the kids and a microphone in his hand. He has made some bad calls in his private life, but this one, the biggest decision a cricketer has to face, he seems to have got spot-on. His powers had finally begun to fade, but the fact that he has still managed three four-fors in yet another Ashes victory suggests he may have one or two last hurrahs up his sleeve – if, unlike Bradman in 1948, he can keep a tear out of his eye. The 700th wicket will surely come fast, hastened by the cheers of a packed MCG. With two Tests to go, he could even gobble up the 14 he needs for 200 in the Ashes.

For England, it’s a last chance to continue the slightly better work of their past few meetings with Warne. They should be looking to shut out the emotion of the moment, as well as the towering reputation and the inevitable sledges, and make him feel every one of his 37 years. The way Ian Bell (at last) played him on Sunday, with spring heels and an upright bat, will do nicely.

Harmison’s decision is more questionable. Semi-retirement is a good option and one that more players should consider: it has clearly helped Warne. Harmison hasn’t been working as a one-day bowler, and he clearly struggles as much with long absences from home as he does with the one-day wide rule. But he is custom-built for the Caribbean, as he showed in 2004. If he was going to quit before the World Cup, he would have been better off doing it last summer. But I guess he didn’t know he was going to want to. These decisions are not easy.

There is now yet another opportunity for England’s younger brigade. Chris Tremlett is a good pick, a tall, awkward, hit-the-splice bowler who just might be coming through now after shining at the Academy in Perth. But he should be there alongside Stuart Broad, not instead of him. How can the same selectors be wise enough to pick Monty Panesar and dumb enough to leave out Broad?

	Will Monty Panesar make the cut for the one-day series? © Getty Images

Tomorrow England announce a squad for the one-day series. Monty Panesar is widely expected not to be in it. He hasn’t played a one-day international yet, and he would be a bit of a gamble as he has played hardly any one-day cricket for his county. But the same was true of Simon Jones when he became a first-choice one-day player for England in 2005. And Monty, like Jones, is something special.

He is a wicket-taker, and an inspiration. Matthew Hoggard, writing in today’s Times, says England need more of Monty’s attitude. A contributor to this blog, Ian, has described Monty as a talisman, which is spot-on. He has some of same the qualities – spark, enthusiasm, appetite and enjoyment – that Andrew Flintoff has, when not carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

England’s one-day team is in a mess. They have two big problems: getting bowled out, and not taking wickets. Jamie Dalrymple has come in this year and done well as a bits-and-pieces player, showing a strong temperament and getting some revs on the ball. But as yet he isn’t a strike bowler: in 14 games his best is two for five, and his strike rate, 52 balls for each wicket, is as modest as Ashley Giles’s. Michael Yardy, picked alongside him in the Champions Trophy, is another tidy bits-and-pieces player, a natural understudy to Dalrymple rather than a foil.

	Vengeance for Australia © Getty Images

Australia have won the Ashes, at speed, in style, and quite deservedly. They have played much the better cricket. They haven’t always been at their best, but they have had something England have lacked: an intensity, born of hunger. One team has been on a cricket tour; the other has been on a mission.

In 2005, much was made of the idea that Michael Vaughan’s young team were not scarred by Ashes defeat. But defeat doesn’t have to be a scar. For Ricky Ponting, it has been a spur. He has been the man of the series, the outstanding performer on either side. His batting has been world-beating: from day one, there has been no sign of the shackles England put him in last time. His captaincy remains naïve on the tactical front – some of his field setting today was strangely defensive, as if he had 50 runs to play with rather than 250 – but he had a burning desire for vengeance which he managed to communicate to his team.

On the final morning at Adelaide, when the game seemed to be drifting to the dullest of draws, Ponting gathered his team round and asked if any of them thought they couldn’t win the match. They responded, and England froze. That first session proved the defining moment of the series. There is all the difference in the world between 1-0 after two Tests and 2-0.

The Dad’s Army jibes have not been entirely misplaced. These Australians are a great team in their twilight years, and their big runs have been made by the younger batsmen. The under-35s – Ponting, Mike Hussey and Michael Clarke – have amassed 1312 at an average of 119. Even if you include Andrew Symonds, that average still stays over 100. The over-35s, even after Adam Gilchrist’s fabulous firework display, have made only half as many runs (645 at 37). And it was striking how much Symonds’ fielding lifted the team at Perth.

The leading wicket-taker in the series is also one of Australia’s younger players – Stuart Clark. But here the old stagers have had more influence. Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne don’t take as many wickets as they used to, but they don’t waste them. The one time McGrath has managed more than two wickets was in England’s first innings of the series, the one that set the tone. Since then he has been mortal, but able to make strategic interventions, such as snaring Alastair Cook last night. Only Kevin Pietersen has been able to treat him with disrespect. The Aussie edifice is a magnificent building in need of some refurbishment.

Warne has aged too. In 2005, his wickets were evenly split between first innings and second. This time he has been negligible in the first innings, taking two for 233, but still a force in the second, with three four-fors. The trademarks are all still there, some of the time – the lavish spin, the drift, the variations, the histrionics, the ability to seize the moment. But he is slowly turning into Stuart MacGill.

For England to beat Australia, all the planets had to be in alignment: settled side, strong captain, four fit fast bowlers, home advantage, openers making runs, Flintoff on fire. This time they didn’t have any of those. Their year of four captains has ended with the wrong one in charge, although he has done well at times, and for a happy hour today he found his feet, his smile and his old self. But then he hadn't had to bowl, or even think, for all of yesterday.

	Plenty of power but even Pietersen gave up © Getty Images

England’s batting has been brittle, and the top order green, but overall it has done quite well. The team average of 316 is virtually identical to last time (318). What they haven’t been able to do is score fast, except off Brett Lee. Not even Pietersen and Flintoff have strike rates above 60. That has been partly the gravity of the situation, and partly the old-school parsimony of Clark, a one-man reproach to the profligate third seamers of 2005.

Pietersen’s performance today was an odd one. He played himself back in, which was essential; he let Flintoff dominate, which was wise; but then he had nothing more to offer. He should have taken Warne and allowed Geraint Jones face the seamers. And helping himself to a single off the first ball when batting with the tail was tantamount to waving the white flag. In his Sunday newspaper column, Pietersen appeared to have given up; his handling of the tail confirmed it. The fans belting out Jerusalem deserved better.

But it isn’t the batting wot lost it: it’s the management. Weakened by injuries, England further handicapped themselves with their selection. Duncan Fletcher, who normally avoids unforced changes, made three for the first Test at Brisbane. Ashley Giles, Jimmy Anderson and Geraint Jones were all rushed back into the team as if they were superstars. Two of them were short of match fitness, and one was still out of form. As Flintoff himself was rusty, and Steve Harmison was out of sorts too, the attack was a rabble, crying out for Monty Panesar.

Australia’s team average, virtually level with England’s in 2005 (315), has rocketed to 578, which is what it was in the halcyon year of 1989. Fletcher’s misjudgments made it easier for them. Good players can have a bad series; so can good coaches.

The echo of 1989 is significant. England went into that series as holders of the Ashes. Australia kept faith with the captain who had steered them to defeat in the previous series, Allan Border. He was a great batsman and limited captain, implacably set on vengeance, whereas England were in disarray, with a coach and chairman of selectors not seeing eye to eye and the captaincy changing hands for the fourth time in a year. It’s astonishing that Fletcher, the most methodical of England coaches, should have fallen into some of the same traps.

Before the series began, it looked as if Ponting’s Australia were too old but still too good for England in this fragile state. They have proved it. They have been a touch too old, but much too good. That’s the thing about Dad’s Army: they finished on the winning side.

	The icing on the cake for Australia. But what icing. © Getty Images

When Adam Gilchrist came in, at 365 for five, the game was virtually up. England were hardly going to make 400 to win the Test, or bat two days to draw it, so they were already praying for a monsoon in the midst of a drought. Gilchrist’s innings was the icing on the cake. But what icing.

Andrew Flintoff nearly got him early on, squirting to gully, and what followed underlined just how much Flintoff had achieved in keeping the greatest number seven in history quiet through a whole series. Once Flintoff took himself off, Gilchrist played Twenty20: two runs per ball, a couple of fours per over off the quicks, and a string of sixes that were so massive, they should really have been eights. It was magical stuff. This series hasn’t delivered the knife-edge excitement of 2005, but here was something to go into Ashes folklore.

The game had been shaped by four other batsmen: Matt Hayden, raging against the dying of the light: Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey, maintaining their double run-machine act; and Michael Clarke, easing to another unnoticed hundred. England didn’t hold their half-chances, and didn’t bowl enough yorkers at Gilchrist. The heat of Perth may have got to them, but it could equally have been the heat of the Ashes kitchen, which has been too much for them at most of the critical moments in the past month.

Australia had learnt from their mistake at Perth last year, when the scores in the first three innings were very similar, but their 500 came at a stodgy rate. South Africa were left needing to bat four sessions, rather than six and a bit. One slow, battling hundred – from Jacques Rudolph – was enough to save them. England need three, and the man best equipped to provide one, Andrew Strauss, has once again been rudely Koertzened.

England are back where they were after three days in Brisbane, playing only for pride. And they don’t have enough batsmen: the decision to stick with five bowlers has backfired, with Flintoff seeming unsure how to use Saj Mahmood. Collectively, they need to push the game into the fifth day.

Individually, most of them have points to prove. Alastair Cook has to get past 50, Ian Bell past 60, and Paul Collingwood has to show he can cope with steep bounce. Flintoff himself needs to find his feet and his form, after losing his way as a batsman and now finishing wicketless for the first time in 42 Tests, since Edgbaston 2003. Geraint Jones, poised somewhere between the last-chance saloon and the stocks, needs runs more than anyone. Only Kevin Pietersen has nothing to prove, and the prospect of another duel with Shane Warne always gets his juices flowing. So there should be plenty of interest in the last rites. Then again, it could be all over by lunch.

	The man most likely to score a hundred fell foul to Rudi's trigger finger © Getty Images

It’s pretty flat in western Australia, but England can turn most surfaces into a rollercoaster. After soaring yesterday, they slumped today. Perth is a very particular place to bat. Whenever Australia have had a decent attack, it has been a graveyard for English batsmen, because the bounce and carry turns the typical English ploy of propping forward on off stump into catching practice for the cordon.

Some distinguished players have made hardly any Test runs at the WACA. Graham Gooch managed 116 (spread over 17 years), Alec Stewart 120, Mike Atherton 100, Ian Botham 92, Mike Gatting 92, Nasser Hussain 76, Michael Vaughan 43, Marcus Trescothick 38, Keith Fletcher 26. In modern times, only three types of Englishman have consistently been able to cope: left-handers (David Gower 471, Chris Broad 178), extreme technicians (Geoff Boycott 319, Mark Ramprakash 187), and South African exports (Allan Lamb 200, Robin Smith 101 in one match) – men who grew up an ocean away, rather than a whole world. The present England team don’t have any technicians, so today was all about representatives of the other two breeds: Andrew Strauss and Kevin Pietersen.

Strauss has had a weird series – always in form, never in the runs, thanks to a combination of bad hooking and bad luck with decisions. He has made runs almost every time in the warm-ups, as if he was a dead-match bully, which he very definitely isn’t. This is not a man who wilts under pressure, or who worries when he starts a series poorly, as he did in the 2005 Ashes. Today he controlled his temptation to hook, and looked like getting his first major score on Australian soil.

The square drives were pinging through extra cover, which is quite an achievement at the WACA. The mood music was upbeat. He made a quick start, then consolidated, then came out of his shell again. He spanked a cover drive off Stuart Clark, only to fall for the obvious follow-up, the one pushed wider. But he missed it. There was no edge, and he was still given out by Rudi Koertzen, a man whose mode of dismissal is so stylish – a gunslinger’s glare and the left arm coming up in super slo-mo – that he likes to give it plenty of airings.

On past form, England wouldn’t have got many more than Australia’s 244, but Strauss was the man most likely to make a hundred. Pietersen was kept quiet by tight bowling, then by super-defensive fields and the stifling presence of Matthew Hoggard, the deadest deadbat in world cricket. Pietersen showed glimmers of his genius and an ability to adapt, but that does not as yet include the ability to marshal a tail like Steve Waugh or Mike Hussey. He is too much the showman to be a good shepherd.

England lost the first Test because they only had half a bowling attack. Having finally fixed that problem, they now find they only have half a batting line-up. Everybody except Strauss, Pietersen and arguably Collingwood, is at least one place too high. Alastair Cook, as predicted, has become this year’s Ian Bell. At number three, Bell is confirming that he is a gifted number six.

At six and seven, the overstretched Flintoff and the out-of-form Jones have become an awfully soft underbelly. They are fine in those slots when they are at the top of their game, as at Trent Bridge 2005, but that’s a long time ago now. They find themselves so high up because of England’s dogged belief in the fifth bowler, and as one of them is captain and the other is on the management committee, they are partly responsible. So it was cruelly ironic that the man they handed their wickets to, like a couple of Christmas presents, should be Australia’s fifth bowler, Andrew Symonds.

Flintoff, who started the series as the leader of the pack, trying to be captain on the side, is now more of a captain who bowls a bit and bats hardly at all. He hasn’t even held a catch. The widespread assumption has been that if he gets injured, England are sunk. As it is, he has just about stayed fit, and they are sinking fast. If he were to miss a Test, it might not be the worst thing, for him or for them.

	Monty is here at last © Getty Images

Today two proud men finally admitted that they had made a mistake. England’s team sheet had 11 names on it, but it boiled down to two words: mea culpa. By picking Monty Panesar and Sajid Mahmood, Messrs Fletcher and Flintoff conceded that they were wrong, and the rest of us were right.

Monty then went out and proved it, with a large helping of luck. He didn’t bowl as well as he can, but after all the brouhaha, he did well to bowl as well as he did. And he has earned some good fortune after handling the frustrations of the past few weeks with amazing good humour. Even after today’s triumph, he was still saying: “The selectors know what’s best for the team. I trust their judgment.” Which was highly magnanimous. And showed why he, among others, would have been a better pick for BBC Sports Personality of the Year than the talented, but not as yet very colourful, Zara Phillips.

Fletcher and Flintoff may have blundered in the faith they showed in Ashley Giles, but they were vindicated today in their decision to stick by Steve Harmison. One of the best things about Fletcher’s England is that, unlike some of their predecessors, they usually rise to the challenge of fast pitches. This wasn’t an absolute Perth trampoline, but it was yards quicker than the Adelaide dustbowl.

The last time England saw anything like it was at Old Trafford five months ago, when Panesar and Steve Harmison destroyed Pakistan. Then, they took nine for 40 between them; here, nine for 140, with Harmison – helped by the umpires – collecting his first overseas four-for since West Indies 2004. In the second innings at Old Trafford, Panesar and Harmison went one better and took all ten. It’s early days, but Panesar has shown a glimpse of something Shane Warne has in spades: the ability to team up, lethally, with a fast bowler, using bounce more than turn, and thus impose himself on a Test match from the start.

The pitch was sporting. The central figure was sporting. The underdogs barked, but the favourites fought back. The Aussies are still favourites, and it will be no surprise if they reassert themselves tomorrow. But this was just the sort of day the series needed.

	Bell: yet to dominate © Getty Images

There are many players in this series who have no real counterpart in the opposing team. Geraint Jones doesn’t bear much resemblance to Adam Gilchrist. Kevin Pietersen has little in common with Mike Hussey. And Shane Warne couldn’t easily be mistaken for either of England’s slow left-armers. But there are two players whose career paths have been quite similar: Michael Clarke and Ian Bell.

They’re both boyish, blondish right-handers who know what it is to be the great white hope of their country’s batting. Clarke is the only young cricketer in Australia who has been a regular in the Test team. At 25, he has played 24 Tests, scoring 1324 runs at an average of 40. Bell, a year younger, has played 20 Tests, making 1423 runs at an average of 45, which comes down to 38 if you discount the bonanza he enjoyed against Bangladesh in 2005.

Behind the similar stats lie two different approaches to handling young players, partly dictated by the different stages the two teams have reached. Australia, with a powerful and experienced top order, have kept Clarke out of the deep end. He has never batted in the top three. At four and five, he has done modestly – three fifties in 18 innings and an average of 30. But at six and seven, he has been a star: also in 18 innings, he has three hundreds, two fifties and an average of 52. Tomorrow, he moves up to five again.

For Bell, against Australia, five would be a luxury. He batted at four in the last Ashes and has been at three in this one. In India last winter, he even opened in a Test. His average, like Clarke’s, rises with his position: 13 as an opener, 36 at three, 44 at four (inflated by Bangladesh), 45 at five, 93 at six. Maybe England should drop him down to eight.

Both men have made neat, consistent starts to their one-day international career, averaging in the low forties. But where Bell has 26 caps, Clarke already has 91, so he has far more experience of the pressure-cooker. England are not good at giving their bright young things one-day experience, as Alastair Cook (two caps) is now discovering.

	Pup for a reason © Getty Images

Clarke and Bell have both done well in this series. Bell has come in every time at about 30 for one, and has scores of 50, 0, 60 and 26, which doesn’t sound much but is about twice as good as he was last time. Clarke has come in at 407 for four, 257 for four, and 121 for four, and has yet to fail, making 56, a stealthy 124, and 21 not out. He has shone in all of Australia’s last three wins against England, going back to Lord’s 2005, when he shared an excellent stand with Damien Martyn. Bell has made four Ashes fifties, yet none of them has led to a win.

Clarke is still the baby of the Australian side. They call him Pup and look out for him. During the Adelaide Test, Warne had dinner with him and told him they were going to add 100 together the next day. They did. It must have been like getting an injection of pure confidence.

Bell isn’t England’s youngest player any more – Cook is two years younger. He finds himself in a dressing-room where hardly anyone is old enough to be a father figure. Ashley Giles, perhaps, when fit and not feeling too Eeyorish; Matt Maynard, the batting coach, perhaps. Someone must be doing something right because against Pakistan last summer, Bell was a revelation at number six, adding a touch of Greg Chappell to his familiar Mike Atherton impression. Now, pushed up to three by Marcus Trescothick’s troubles, he has been able to survive but not to dominate. When he faces Warne, it’s like watching a siege.

	Flirting with balance: allrounderless for the first two Tests, Australia have called up Andrew Symonds for the third © Getty Images

Australia abandoned the policy before the first Test, when their allrounder, Shane Watson, pulled up lame. They reverted to six batsmen and four bowlers, and it has mostly worked a treat. The sixth batsman, Michael Clarke, has made runs, and the fifth bowler was missed only on the first two days at Adelaide, when England tucked into Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne as never before. Now, following Damien Martyn’s sudden retirement, the Aussies are flirting with balance again by bringing back Andrew Symonds as their allrounder.

England went ahead and played a balanced side – or tried to. They picked five bowlers and six batsmen, with Andrew Flintoff as the pivot, just like in their glory years of 2004 and 2005. But it hasn’t worked out like that. The balanced side has been a fantasy.

With an overloaded Flintoff going in at six and an out-of-form Geraint Jones at seven, the batting has been brittle. Each time Flintoff has batted after a bowling stint, he has flopped. He has been his old self only in the first innings at Adelaide, when he made a breezy 38 not out in a no-pressure situation. His struggles are confirming the simple truth that no man can do three jobs on a cricket field for any length of time.

At his best as an allrounder, in 2005, Flintoff was visibly giving his all for England. Once he was captain as well, on the toughest tour in the game, something had to give. It was his batting. He managed some captain’s innings in India, but since then he has been scoring like a tailender: five Tests, 103 runs, average 17. His strike rate has plunged from his usual merry 70 to a wary 49. He has managed a few fours and sixes, but the ones and twos have dried up. It’s block, bash and usually crash.

So England have really only been picking five batsmen. And they certainly haven’t had that many bowlers. At Brisbane, three of them were liabilities – Steve Harmison, Jimmy Anderson and Ashley Giles. At Adelaide, all three were picked again. They improved to the extent that their three wickets cost 368 instead of 485. None of them has managed even a two-for so far. This England side is balanced in only one sense: the batsmen and the bowlers are both liable to go to pieces.

The silver lining here is that the selection has been so wrong that both suits can be strengthened at once. The most pressing need is for a third bowling banker – someone as dependable as Flintoff and Hoggard. There is only one candidate in the tour party: Monty Panesar. Not because he is a saviour or a panacea – those are just labels. It’s because, on the evidence of recent Tests, he is steady and occasionally deadly. Only three men have taken a five-for for England in the past year – Hoggard, Harmison and Panesar.

In 2006, Monty has 32 wickets in ten Tests at an average of 32 and a strike rate of 75. Giles has six wickets in four Tests at an average of 84 and a strike rate of 157. Go back to Giles’s last 10 Tests and he has 17 wickets at 67. Compared to Monty, Giles offers half the wickets at twice the price. The gulf between them is there in every column of their stats, even the maidens – Monty bowls 10 per Test, Giles only four. One builds up pressure, the other releases it.

	'In 2006, Monty has 32 wickets in ten Tests at an average of 32 and a strike rate of 75. Giles has six wickets in four Tests at an average of 84 and a strike rate of 157' © Getty Images

Good citizen though he is, Giles is never picked as one of four bowlers, which is revealing. It’s a tacit admission that he isn’t good enough. He is a fifth bowler. In the last Ashes, that was all right because Flintoff and Simon Jones were forming a little dream team as third and fourth seamers. Since then, Giles’s bowling has been like his batting: marginal. England’s four victories since the Ashes (not counting the Hair forfeit) have all come without him – and with Panesar.

If Flintoff and Fletcher finally accept this and leave him out, what happens to England’s balance? Not much, as long as they also accept that Flintoff himself isn’t able to operate fully as a batsman. So he moves down to seven, with Ed Joyce coming in higher up (hell of a time to make a debut, but England didn’t have the sense to pick anyone with experience, and Joyce does have plenty of talent). This leaves Flintoff as one of four bowlers, which is a risk, but not as bad as having only five batsmen for a must-win Test.

It means Paul Collingwood – mysteriously untried so far – and Kevin Pietersen will have to bowl some of Giles’s overs. With Panesar taking the rest, the net result might even be a profit. England’s attack will then be Hoggard, Flintoff, Panesar and one other. This could be Harmison, though it would be an act of blind loyalty. Or it could be Sajid Mahmood, who has pace, bounce, movement and the knack of getting good batsmen out. He just doesn’t have consistency. The normal caveat about him is that he is expensive, but he can hardly go for many more runs than Anderson has (4.78 an over). It would be a less balanced side only on paper. In practice, it would be better-equipped to climb the mountain that England now face.

	Outrageous willpower: Warne gets back in the wickets © Getty Images

They were defeated today by their own timidity, but also by three phenomenal players, two of them bang in form, one returning to it. Shane Warne, who had been at his worst over the weekend, ricocheted back to his best. Outrageous fortune supplied his first wicket as Andrew Strauss was given out caught off his pad. Outrageous willpower did the rest, with help from some skilled reverse-swing from a revitalised Brett Lee. Pride, which had come before Warne’s fall, came swiftly after it too: he may even have been fired up by the stick he took in the press. His wickets in this series have come at a most uncharacteristic cost – an average of 40, and a strike rate of 85 – yet he has still produced two vital four-fors.

The two men in form were Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey. On a day when everybody else either got out or scratched around, they made a hundred between them off only 124 balls, and added a nerve-settling, gate-closing, match-deciding 83 off 16 overs. Ponting’s 49 was almost a failure by his current Elysian standards, but it was just what was needed. Hussey has batted three times in this series, and every time he has built a crucial partnership with Ponting. Today he showed his extraordinary flexibility by abandoning his Test-match grafting and slipping into one-day finisher mode. He was Allan Border in the first innings and Michael Bevan in the second.

Meanwhile England had frozen. Their aggression, so calculated under Michael Vaughan, has gone badly awry. Today they scored only 70 runs off 54 overs. Even allowing for the pitch, that sort of progress was just dreadful. There were plenty of gaps in the field, but they couldn’t find them. After defying gravity for two innings, they finally suffered for their unbalanced batting order – four grafters followed by two big-hitters. Kevin Pietersen, majestic in the first innings, was humbled today. Rob Smyth, over on the Guardian site, spotted that he had said in his book, “I see no way Shane can bowl me round my legs”. Hubris and Nemesis again.

Paul Collingwood, after the euphoria of the first innings, was thrust back into his role of two months ago in the Champions Trophy – the last man standing, scraping an unbeaten 20, the housemate who always clears up the mess. Except that this was too big a mess for one person to clear up. His Steve Waugh-like tendencies do not yet extend to being able to take the tail by the scruff of the neck.

In extreme situations, home truths emerge. It was telling that Hussey was promoted above Damien Martyn. And it was telling that Steve Harmison and James Anderson were virtual spectators. So much comes down to selection. If Australia had been ruthless with their middle order in 2005 and sent for Hussey, they would surely have clung on to the Ashes. Having him now has put them in charge this time.

If England had played a full bowling attack in these two Tests … well, it surely wouldn’t have been this bad. Harmison, Anderson and Giles have taken six for 853 in the series. No team can afford that. The price they have paid for dropping two young bowlers who were doing well, in Panesar and Mahmood, has been an awfully high one.

But it would be wrong to write about England's mistakes without acknowledging my own. Yesterday I wrote as if the game had already been drawn, which was a howler. To those who have written in gleefully pointing this out, I can only say: it's a fair gloat. If I had Photoshop on my computer, you'd see some egg on that picture in the top right-hand corner.

	What we learnt from Adelaide: Flintoff can't do it all © Getty Images

1. Matthew Hoggard has finally taken a big haul against Australia. His performance here was in a great Yorkshire tradition – not of Fred Trueman, but of Darren Gough and Craig White, who both worked out how to bowl wily cutters on subcontinental featherbeds. “I like a good s***heap,” White used to say. Hoggard, who learnt at the feet of those two, is the new king of the s***heap. Today, his Test career average quietly slipped below 30 – and passed Steve Harmison’s, travelling in the opposite direction.

2. We have again seen the folly of picking a defensive slow bowler whose main contribution is a few runs at no.8. And now both teams are doing it.

3. Of the six veterans in the match, five have struggled. Back-to-back Tests are hard on all the players, but especially on the old and/or infirm. Langer, Hayden and Martyn failed with the bat, Warne and McGrath with the ball. The only greybeard to do well was Adam Gilchrist with his 64 – easily the most fluent of the seven fifties in the match, and highly ominous for England.

4. The other thing about back-to-back Tests is that they are too apt to be an extension of the one before. This one has been played on a very different surface from Brisbane, yet half the players have continued in the same vein: Collingwood, Pietersen and Bell have again made the bulk of England’s runs. Ponting, Hussey, Clarke and Clark have again starred for Australia. Cook, Lee, Harmison, Anderson and Giles have again been virtually empty-handed. Only Langer, Warne, McGrath and Hoggard have had dramatically different fortunes in the two games. Test cricket needs that drama.

5. Andrew Flintoff has confirmed that he can’t do three things at once and shine in all of them. At Brisbane he bowled well, captained indifferently, and batted poorly. Here he batted better, captained a lot better, and bowled worse after a strong start. Now his ankle is hurting again. Something had to give.

6. The match has reiterated that high scoring is boring. We need a nice, tight, tense low-scoring Test at Perth, with the team batting first getting about 300. Whether there is any chance of the pitch allowing this is another matter.

7. England have dragged themselves back to respectability. They can even begin to think about winning the series. But only if they pick more than half an attack.

	Warne has often made a fool of himself off the field. Here, for the first time in Ashes cricket, he was humiliated on it © Getty Images

A few days ago, Shane Warne was dismissing England’s batting – in the middle at the Gabba, and in the papers afterwards. England still can’t play me, he said. Only Pietersen played me well, Collingwood was lucky, I’m all over Bell. Warne is usually a better read than most players because he isn’t bland, but this was cheap stuff. It was what the players call mind games. And what the ancient Greeks called Hubris.

Hubris, in tragedy, is followed inexorably by Nemesis – the goddess of retribution, whose job it is to take mortals down a peg. In Adelaide, she paid Warne a visit. First she rendered him wicketless on a dry, turning pitch. Then she put an idea into his head: if he couldn’t get wickets by attacking, he could go right on the defensive and bore Kevin Pietersen out.

This was an eventuality more shaming than any bowling figures. Australia had to break that partnership, and all the biggest wicket-taker in history had to offer was leg-side filth. Warne was not himself: he was reduced to Ashley Giles – another man he had been disparaging a few days ago.

Warne has often made a fool of himself off the field. Here, for the first time in Ashes cricket, he was humiliated on it.

Pietersen’s patience was formidable, a bonus to add to his exceptional talent. And Paul Collingwood played a monumental innings for someone who was heading for the 12th-man slot a month ago. When Collingwood started his international career with a few unsuccessful one-dayers in 2001, Steve Waugh said he saw something in him. Maybe what he saw was something of himself: the ability to know your game, stick to your strengths, survive on a bad day and and cash in on a good one.

Yesterday I wondered if England had built enough of a platform. O me of little faith. Today they were superb. Flintoff, who could well have flopped after an interminable wait, eased back into the runs, and then wisely yielded to the chorus calling for him to take the new ball himself. They may not win the match, but they have made a powerful point.

	England did well to lose only three wickets, but Australia did well to concede only three an over © Getty Images

Until Duncan Fletcher came along in 1999, the England team had some powerful traditions. The selection was haphazard and irresponsible. The bowling was inconsistent. And the batting, with the odd glorious exception, was apt to be stolid. All three of these tendencies, Fletcher and his men now seem hell-bent on restoring.

Adelaide, the most old-fashioned of Australia’s Test grounds, produced an old-fashioned day of vigilance and attrition on one side, perseverance and mind games on the other, and perfect balance overall. In other words, Test cricket.

England did well to lose only three wickets, but Australia did well to concede only three an over (even allowing for a squishy outfield). If you play the old trick of adding two wickets, something the new ball may yet deliver, then Australia are slightly on top. The pitch is so dry that the time to make runs is in the first innings. England could be all out for 350, as they were last time at Adelaide, from a similar position. Or they could push on to 500 – and still concede a first-innings lead.

The pitch has turned so much, so early, that England’s most likely wicket-taker would have been Monty Panesar. If he was playing. When he was left out last week, it was the most depresssing England selection for 14 years. But this was worse, because Adelaide is more of a spinners’ ground, and because the bowling was so toothless at Brisbane without him. He should have been the second bowler on the team sheet, after Flintoff.

England’s selection policy has gone to pieces on this tour. Bowl rubbish and your place is unquestioned. Bowl really well, early in your Test career, and you get dropped. Miss a year through injury and you can have your place straight back, even though you haven’t taken any wickets to speak of – and didn’t take many in the past. With values like that, the management hardly deserve to get back into the series.

The batsmen, however, do. Too limited to take the Edgbaston 05 route and bash their way out of a corner, the top order opted to do it by blocking. Ian Bell, so fluent against Pakistan a few months ago, turned into Chris Tavare in Brisbane, and stayed in that mode for two hours today. Off his first 95 balls, he scored just 23. Here was the doughty rearguard the traditionalists were calling for last weekend. They shall not pass. All shall sleep.

It was impressive, but also in danger of being self-defeating. Paul Collingwood was better, busier, smarter at finding the gaps in an intricate field. For possibly the first time, Ricky Ponting was in danger of being too clever. Why did Stuart Clark only have a few more overs than Michael Clarke?

Eventually Bell emerged from his shell, and he was rocking along – 37 off his last 53 balls – when he got suckered into a Strauss-style hook. He has now reached 50 four times against Australia without getting beyond 60. He is a fine supporting player, but a no. 3 needs to be more than that.

It was left to Kevin Pietersen to bring some modernity to the game. For the third Test in a row, he had the better of a thrilling duel with Warne. The old boy had been back to his best in the first two sessions – probing and threatening, yet going for no more than two an over.

Bell managed only nine off 44 balls from him. Pietersen faced Warne nearly as much, 42 balls, and smacked them around for 29. Collingwood, foraging astutely, has collected 43 off 69 balls from Warne. Between them, these three have given England a chance to make Australia’s elderly geniuses really feel their age.