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.