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.

	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.

	Yet to come to the party, but his plate is already overflowing © Getty Images

The central problem at Brisbane was that the bowlers had a shocker – and then the batsmen did too. Result: first-innings deficit of 445. If Ricky Ponting hadn’t sportingly given them a chance to regroup, they might well have lost by an innings and 300 runs.

It’s being said that everything has to go right for England if they are to get back into the series. That’s overstating it. But everything can’t carry on going wrong. At Adelaide, either the bowlers or the batsmen have to do well in the first innings.

The batsmen began to turn the corner at the Gabba. Four of the top six put together one decent innings, and two of them, Collingwood and Pietersen, even managed to dominate. The two who didn’t come to the party (© Duncan Fletcher 1999) were the two men who have captained England this year.

One of them, Andrew Flintoff, has so much on his plate that he has to be given some leeway. The other, Andrew Strauss, has to make some runs now. He is in form, or was when he last spent long enough at the crease to show it, but he has been out to the hook or pull four times in six innings in Australia. At Adelaide, with its beguiling square boundaries, the temptation to keep hooking will be strong. Let him hook – but downwards. (And let Geoff Boycott remember that he once had a hooking problem too, against Keith Boyce of the West Indies in 1973.)

	Strauss has been out to the hook or pull four times in six innings in Australia © Getty Images

When one of the batsmen gets to 80, as Collingwood and Pietersen did at Brisbane, he has to get 80 more. Even that may not be enough: Michael Vaughan made 177 at Adelaide last time, and still England lost by an innings, because nobody else passed 60. But England need to make their big runs bigger. The majority of their hundreds in Fletcher’s time haven’t made it to 125. Strauss, curiously for someone so level-headed, has yet to reach 150 in a Test. This is the moment.

The bowlers need to shape up as swiftly as the batsmen did at the Gabba. Somehow, they have to break through Australia’s top order. In home Tests since England last toured, Langer, Hayden and Ponting have made 7,188 runs at 70. The good news is that England have already had Australia three down for hardly any once this winter – in the one-day international at Jaipur. The bad news is that the man who did most of the damage was Saj Mahmood. And Langer and Hayden weren't playing.

England can do it, but only if they show intensity in their whole game, from bowling to captaincy. Memo to Flintoff: have a third man for Langer. Put three catchers on the drive for Hayden, not just one. Bowl full at Ponting, eight inches outside off, with the odd one jagging back for the lbw. Get Monty on early, and don’t be too bothered if they try to bully him. And give yourself the new ball: until Harmison recovers, you’re the spearhead.

	All about the percentages © Getty Images

Australia had two glaring weaknesses in the last Ashes series: their third seamers and middle-order batsmen. At the Gabba, England saw just how well they have fixed those holes.

Mike Hussey came in at no.5 and turned a possible turning point (198 for 3) into a walk in the park (407 for 4). He did it by approaching Test cricket the old-fashioned way, playing the percentages. Of the six major individual scores in the match, Hussey’s 86 was much the slowest. Happy to play a supporting role to Ricky Ponting, he faced 187 balls and hit only eight of them for four, even though he largely evaded England's big gun, facing just 20 balls from Andrew Flintoff. It was boring but effective. Hussey isn’t vice-captain yet, but this, just like his studious unbeaten 32 against England at Jaipur, was a vice-captain’s innings.

At 31, Hussey is older than the entire England team bar Ashley Giles. So is the new third seamer, Stuart Clark. Having waited their turn, both men have a breadth of view and a lack of ego that even a Pom can find appealing. Where Hussey is already an automatic choice, Clark could easily have been left out for Mitchell Johnson or Shaun Tait. By picking him alongside Glenn McGrath for the first time, the selectors sacrificed variety for steadiness, and risked duplication – attack of the clones.

Clark didn’t worry about that, he just got on with bowling line and length with a bit of nip and nibble. An aspiring commercial lawyer, he lived up to the stereotypes of his profession. He was greedy enough to help himself to quick runs: making a merry 39 is one thing, but getting it off 23 balls is as outrageous as a lawyer’s bill. Then, when he bowled, he was calculating enough to see that the cracks in the pitch, and the English psyche, meant that he could just keep it tight and let the circumstances do the rest.

Frugal in the first innings, solid in the second, Clark finished with match figures of 7 for 93. Even allowing for the fact that four of his victims were tailenders – and two were Matthew Hoggard, the world’s least threatening no.9 – this made a spectacular contrast with the men doing the same job in 2005. Australia’s assorted third seamers then (Gillespie, Kasprowicz and Tait) managed 9 for 504 in five Tests. England picked on them, taking a ruthless leaf out of the Aussies’ own book. Clark’s strong start means the bullies are going to have to look elsewhere this time.

	'If Australia lose, the captain – still, after a hundred Tests, one of the younger players in his team – will be sacked' © Getty Images

This is it. This is when all the words, all the quotes, all the expectations, all the hype, all the memories vanish, and what is left is the blank page, the next chapter. Cricket’s oldest saga is about to resume.

Australia may no longer be the holders of the Ashes, but they are still the favourites. They have more experience, more local knowledge, more batting depth, more bowling genius. They had the edge in some of those departments last year too, but there are crucial differences this time: Australia have fewer injuries, they have home advantage, and they surely have a greater hunger.

If they lose again, a defeat that they have tried to dismiss as a blip will become the end of an era. There will be a big clear-out: at least four players will be pensioned off, and for all the glittering performances of the past, they will leave the stage as losers. The captain – still, after a hundred Tests, one of the younger players in his team – will be sacked.

For England, the stakes are not quite so high. Most of their players have made their names as Ashes winners, and if they lose, it will take only some of the gloss off that achievement. It will be like when Moore, Hurst and Charlton lost in Mexico in 1970: bitterly disappointing, but not legend-shattering. And they will know that just as Australia are favourites this time, despite not being the holders, so they will be favourites in 2009, whether they are the holders or not.

England have a chance of winning this series, perhaps a better one than they had, on paper, 18 months ago. But they have some fairly basic problems, They don’t have enough batsmen. At no.3 for the first Test, they will have either a man who is heavily bruised in Ian Bell, or one who is seriously green in Ed Joyce. The folly of not picking a proper top-three replacement has been exposed.

Nor do England have a settled side. The spine of the team shows several changes from the victory over Pakistan: different captain, different keeper, different first slip, one different opener, different no.3, different third seamer, and perhaps a different spinner. The side will have a different balance – better, as balance goes, but weakening the batting.

	Last time Flintoff was Herculean; this time he is being asked to be Achilles and Agamemnon © Getty Images

Duncan Fletcher, who led England to the promised land of consistency, has now taken them some of the way back. They are repeating old mistakes, chopping and changing, picking the infirm, playing favourites, and giving their captain three roles, as in 1998-99. It didn’t work then for Alec Stewart and only a superhuman performance from Andrew Flintoff will make it work now. Last time he was Herculean; this time he is being asked to be Achilles and Agamemnon, the star warrior and the cool strategist, at the same time. And Brisbane is as much a fortress as Troy.

To find weaknesses among the Australians, you have to look harder. They have gone back to too many players who were dropped after the last Ashes. Their selectors have become conservative to the point of recklessness. By normal standards, they are too old to win a world title fight, but then England, deprived of their two senior players from last time, are too young.

The Aussies may not have quite the unity of their opponents. They may rue the lack of a fifth bowler and wonder why they replaced Shane Watson with a batsman. And their hunger could tip over into desperation. If England can hang in there and get to Christmas at 1-1, the Ashes will be in the balance all the way and the pressure will pile up on Ricky Ponting. Since the Barmy Army sang their first chant in 1994, England have always won one of the last two Tests, when their support is at its peak. Add that to 1-1 and the Ashes will be retained. So Australia are firm favourites, but not certainties.

	Australia won the Champions Trophy...but the win doesn't necessarily guarantee regaining the Ashes © Getty Images

At last, a Champions Trophy has gone according to form. In the end Australia were as far ahead of every other team as they were at the last World Cup. West Indies defied gravity once against them, and threatened to repeat the feat for 45 minutes or so yesterday, but when they fell to earth, as is their wont, they really crashed.

Australia’s victory doesn’t necessarily mean the Ashes will be theirs. We keep being reminded of how England beat Australia in the Champions Trophy of 2004 before their Ashes triumph, but people seem to have forgotten that the last thing that happened between the two sides before the Ashes of 2005 was a three-match one-day series which Australia won quite comfortably. And Test cricket is a half-different game, perhaps more so for England, because they are hopeless at one-dayers and good at Tests: paupers in one form, pretenders to the crown in the other.

But if Australia play as well against England as they have in India, they will regain the Ashes. They have resolved virtually all the doubts about their selection. Shane Watson has done enough with bat and ball to be a genuine prospect at number six, rather than a punt. Glenn McGrath is his old self again, expressing himself far more eloquently with the ball than he does with his tedious point-scoring jibes. And Mitchell Johnson, if he gets the call as third seamer, is going to be a lot harder to belt for five an over than Gillespie, Kasprowicz and Tait were last time.

For England, there is still hope that everything will fall into place on November 23. Their convalescents will be fitter: Andrew Flintoff, the team's double fulcrum now, was far stronger and less rusty in the third game in India than the first. The bits-and-pieces players will be gone and Monty Panesar will be back. Surely not even Duncan Fletcher could think of dropping him for a half-fit Ashley Giles.

Marcus Trescothick should be back too, and Andrew Strauss will be in his element. Steve Harmison will have had more time to rummage through his suitcase for his radar. And Australia will have had an injection of age, with Hayden, Langer and Warne, all old enough now to play in Masters Cricket, replacing Symonds, Clarke and Hogg. But when you find yourself viewing the return of Warne as a plus, you know you’re clutching at straws. Australia are even firmer favourites now, and England’s most realistic aim, although you won't hear them saying so, is a 2-2 draw. Which would be a very good result.

	'Let’s see the old boy back at 85mph' © Getty Images

Australia are firm favourites. England are clear underdogs. England will have to be at their best to win. Australia can probably win without being at their best. The Diwali meeting between the two sides in Jaipur is the Ashes in miniature. There should really be a special trophy for the occasion: a one-inch high urn, containing the remains of a tiny firecracker.

Here are eleven wishes for the game.

1. A truer surface. Nobody’s expecting a 330 pitch, let alone a 430, but a 230 would be good.

2. A close game. Cricket has nothing to show more dull than a 50-over match that flows in only one direction.

3. Some nip from Glenn McGrath. A great fast-bowling career shouldn’t end with military medium. Let’s see the old boy back at 85mph.

4. An outing for Jon Lewis. England will be tempted to play both their tall guys, Harmison and Mahmood, in order to dish it out like they did at the Rose Bowl in the first meeting of 2005. But Lewis is a better one-day bowler than either, and his brand of accuracy is just what these eccentric pitches cry out for. Don’t forget, he played at the Rose Bowl – and took four wickets on debut.

5. A day without shoulder-shoving or verbal onslaughts.

6. Some runs for Andrew Flintoff. Last Sunday he did a good job of leading from the back, but it’s not his way.

7. Some runs for Shane Watson. It’s a bold move to open with him rather than the solid anchorman Simon Katich. It means that for possibly the first time ever, Australia are opening the innings with two men who are not specialist batsmen, though Adam Gilchrist is as good as. Mind you, England have two non-specialists at three and four – Flintoff and Michael Yardy.

8. Fewer wides from England. The seamers, and especially Harmison, owe it to Flintoff to bowl the way he would himself if he was fit: fast and straight.

9. Smart captaincy. Ricky Ponting shuffled his bowlers well on Wednesday and got some tight overs out of Michael Clarke. Flintoff, boxed into a corner by his batsmen, didn’t even try England’s dibbly-dobbly options, which may have been a missed trick.

10. Some runs from Ian Bell. He had done nothing to earn a place in the last Ashes, and it showed in his mousey performances. Now he is ready, and can show the Aussies what a classy player he really is, if he can overcome the drawback of having to open the innings with another non-dasher in Andrew Strauss. On paper one side’s openers are too wacky, the other’s are too straight.

11. Sharper commentary. Wednesday’s memorable encounter between Australia and West Indies was not reflected in the com-box, which dealt mostly in statements of the dismally obvious. Silence or insight, please, gentlemen.

	West Indies simply played out of their skin © Getty Images

The Champions Trophy hasn’t had many runs, but it has had something more precious: upsets. South Africa fell to New Zealand, and now Australia have gone down to West Indies.

The Aussies showed two unexpected weaknesses. After a strong start with the ball, they couldn’t finish off the West Indian top order. The killer instinct was missing. Glenn McGrath, still shaking off the rust and trundling in as third seamer, was anodyne, and while other teams’ spinners have flourished, Australia’s gave Brian Lara and Runako Morton no headaches.

When they batted, the Aussies seemed unsure how to play it, as if they didn’t know whether 234 was a good score on this strange and tricky pitch. By not knowing, they ensured that it was. Adam Gilchrist adjusted his game manfully, gritting his way out of trouble. He deserved to finish on the winning side, but only Michael Clarke gave him much support. The Aussies’ new batting order backfired, with Shane Watson making an early misjudgement and Mike Hussey only reaching the middle in the 42nd over. Watson may well turn out to be the right man to open, but Hussey is surely too low at number seven.

But mainly it was a case of West Indies playing out of their skins. They had so many injuries and illnesses, they had to field a 12th man from outside the squad - Vinayak Samant, the former Mumbai first-class cricketer, who is 34, still actively in cricket, and vice-captain of the Cricket Club of India team - for all of two balls, yet a stand-in captain, Ramnaresh Sarwan, and a junior bowler, Jerome Taylor, combined to slay the giant. The Aussies like to say that it should take a great performance to beat them and Taylor, who had sweat pouring off him yet stayed ice-cool, produced one.

The Aussies were more vulnerable than usual, but England can’t take much comfort from it. For one thing, Australia now need a win on Saturday as badly as England. For another, West Indies are no longer the weakest link in the group. England are.

There are two immediate consequences. The batsmen have little form or confidence to take into Saturday’s meeting with Australia. And England now have to win that match to stay in the tournament. Whether all the England players want to stay in it, deep down, is doubtful – if they drop out early, they get a precious few days at home before setting off for Australia. But you can be sure they don’t want to be humiliated, to be the next whipping boys for the marauding gangs known as Fleet Street sports editors. Which is what will happen if they crash to a second defeat.

	Left-handed openers are going to play a major role in the Ashes series, and not just in the top two © Getty Images

To win the Ashes you almost certainly need a strong opening pair. Most of the Ashes-winning pairings that comes to mind have been either two right-handers or a right and a left. Hobbs and Sutcliffe, Woodfull and Ponsford, Gooch and Robinson were all right-handers. Wessels and Dyson, Broad and Athey, Taylor and Slater were all right-and-left.

Since the final Ashes Test of 2001, Australia’s first-choice opening pair have been two left-handers, Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer. They have never been in danger of being mistaken for two peas in a pod. Hayden is huge and takes a big stride forward, Langer is little and mainly moves sideways, so bowlers have to change their length every time the two of them take a single, just as they would have to change their line for a right-and-left combination.

In 2004, England joined Australia in lefty heaven, when Andrew Strauss became an instant automatic choice to open with Marcus Trescothick. They too play differently, though in a less marked way. Trescothick is a stand-and-deliver thumper, Strauss a nudger, cutter and puller. So in the 2005 Ashes, both openers on both sides were left-handers. Almost as unusually, the English pair did better, making 824 runs between them at 41, to Hayden and Langer’s 712 at 39 - and doing a lot more in the decisive matches.

Now both teams have gone further still. Australia have brought in Mike Hussey, who has spent most of his career as an opener for Western Australia, at number five. He has done so well that WA may be wondering why they ever asked him to open. The nerveless adaptability that Hussey had shown in one-day internationals has translated seamlessly to Test cricket. He can defend, attack, rebuild or shepherd the tail. England’s main hope with him has to be that sophomore syndrome sets in, as it did with Strauss during the first half of the 2005 Ashes.

England’s own top order now consists of three left-handed openers. Alastair Cook has come in at number three to replace Michael Vaughan, and, in all but place, he is the classic left-handed opener – watchful, well-organised, sometimes crabby, powerful square of the wicket, strong against pace, not so hot against spin. His strike rate is a bit old-school (44), but he makes up for it with an outstanding average (54).

Having three openers worked for Australia under Allan Border in the 1980s, when they split up the successful pairing of Geoff Marsh and David Boon to squeeze Mark Taylor in. And it worked for England under Ray Illingworth in 1970-71, when John Edrich was at number three behind Geoff Boycott and Brian Luckhurst. It’s a form of insurance, which England need at the moment, with Trescothick convalescing at home with his stress-related illness.

David Graveney said this week that he had spoken to Trescothick on the phone and he “sounded upbeat”, which is good, but a month ago Graveney was trying to allay doubts about Trescothick having a deadline for his recovery by saying he lived near him and would be able to meet up. That seems not to have happened. The feeling persists that the England management, for understandable reasons, don’t know quite what they are dealing with here.