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.