The first-choice England bowlers were supposed to struggle with the Australian Kookaburra ball, never mind the back-up. So it was with even greater satisfaction - if that was possible - that we watched first reserve Chris Tremlett (17 wickets at 23.35) find Michael Beer's inside edge to end the innings, the match, the bloody Ashes, with England victorious and Australian faces ground into the dirt in a way that no-one, not even the England team's most fervent cheerleaders, aka The Barmy Army, could possibly have envisaged two months ago without spending a night in the Arizona desert tripping their nuts off on some feverishly good peyote.
Nobody said anything about dignity.
The bowlers were meant to be one of the team's suspect faculties in this series, they said. Not got the heart nor the know-how to go toe-to-toe with Australia in home conditions, the whispers had it. They've got nothing if it doesn't swing, and the Kookaburra doesn't swing. How do we know? Aw look mate, if it swung we'd have seen our bowlers swing it. Cue semi-pitying eye-roll. Oh, it's funny to think of all that now.
On this occasion there will be no such fanfare, though the victory is just as sweet. To win against brave, skilled opponents, as they did in 2005, is one thing. To do it against spoiled, muscle-bound brats is quite another. And so it is difficult to resist the urge to crow, and I'm a fellow who gives in easily to temptation.
Jimmy Anderson, the best bowler in the series, whose abilities to swing the ball when old and new bamboozled the Australian batsmen and taunted their hapless bowlers, was described not long ago as "not tough enough to play against Australia" by Justin Langer - the Australian batting coach. Ouch. Speaking of swing, when the England fast bowling quartet of Jones, Harmison, Hoggard and Flintoff - the "Fab Four" who sadly never played together in the same England team - bowled England to victory in 2005, much of the Australian media decided to laud not these four players, but rather Troy Cooley, the Australian bowling coach who it was claimed had taught the four everything they know about reverse swing and without whom would be sending down the same polite pies that previous England bowlers had served up. So who was sitting in the Aussie dressing room this time, most likely with head in hands, as their bowlers singularly failed to emulate their English counterparts in getting any kind of reverse swing at all? That would be Troy Cooley, of course, lured away from the England set-up soon after the 2005 Ashes and who is now being parcelled off to run the national cricket academy. Incidentally, England's current bowling coach, David Saker, is Australian too - but, no doubt to much Australian chagrin, he has just extended his contract.
Ah, the Australian media. They have had it so good for so long and now - now that the Poms have emphatically, unequivocally relegated them to the second tier of test cricket, where they must be content for the foreseeable future to catch glimpses of the dust left in the wake of India, South Africa and England, never mind spotting the actual teams themselves as they battle it out for supremacy over the years ahead - they have, ever gracious, deigned to focus their attentions not on the strength and character shown by the victors, but the unforgivable shortcomings of the vanquished. Most of these flaws come down to the players not possessing surnames like Warne, McGrath, and Hayden, is the not very hard to find subtext hidden amidst the blood-letting. Of course, this cheerfully ignores the fact that the vast majority of the side are the same group of players who won in South Africa less than two years ago. Phil Hughes was there, scoring centuries and being proclaimed Hayden's natural successor. Mitchell Johnson was certainly there, on his way to being crowned the ICC world player of the year, as were Siddle and Hilfenhaus, bowling Australia to victory and ensuring headlines proclaiming a new generation of greats set to extend the era of Australian dominance. That is until England ruthlessly exposed Hughes's technique (in consecutive Ashes series) and managed to shake Johnson's confidence to the degree that the leader of the attack - when in the team, of course, for he was dropped for the first time in his career in this series - no longer takes the new ball and when it is eventually thrown to him the captain, be it Ponting or Clarke, watches events unfold from behind a metaphorical couch. He's the Australian answer to the Daleks, Mitchell - when playing England, that is. He seems to do all right against other teams, hence that player of the year award. Of course, none of this was mentioned when one national paper proclaimed this "The Worst Australian Side Ever". It is all, as Ian Botham might say, a bit ordinary.
Just a little bit of context goes a long way. India, South Africa, and England - or The Big Three, as they shall now be known - should produce some outstanding contests in the next few years. Watching the battered and bruised Australian team scraping the hubris off their collective face will also be fun. I hope Ricky doesn't retire just yet.
