The fifth and final Test ended shortly before half past three with an England defeat and an Ashes success. Moeen Ali, one of the batting joys of the summer, had played another cameo, this time a last-ditch effort, to prolong the end after rain at midday had disrupted play for almost three hours. An old stager would have settled for the red ink in the scorer’s book, and an average for the series in excess of 40, which would not be too shabby for a fellow for whom a fearsome working-over by the Australian pace bowlers had been predicted. Instead he threw the bat to the last, edged to Peter Nevill and the deed was done. It gave a fourth wicket to Peter Siddle, an indefatigable deserving presence in the Australian attack after spending four matches frustrated on the sidelines.
So Australia won the final match of one of the most bizarrely fluctuating of all Test series, never mind Ashes, by an innings and 46 runs and gave Michael Clarke a winning departure from international cricket. This was acknowledged by the generous crowd, not least the canary and green ranks of Australian supporters at the Vauxhall end, whom the outgoing captain went to see after the match.
It was a resounding response by Australia to the brace of humiliating defeats at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge that won the Ashes for Alastair Cook and yet another lesson for his young side, not least in the distinction between being positive in intent and being reckless. Unquestionably Cook’s team is a work in progress but it has the makings of a fine side that will mature in outlook and play without losing the joy it has managed to bring to its game this summer.
Half an hour after the final wicket had fallen the ceremonials began, all of which preceded one of the most incongruous champagne and fireworks showers in sport as the Australians left the England team to their celebrations. First, though, was the man of the match award, which went to Steve Smith, Clarke’s successor as captain, for his century. In the opinion of the England coach, Trevor Bayliss, Australia’s man of the series was Chris Rogers, who made 480 runs at an average of 60 in his final series while opening the batting in consistently tricky conditions.
Darren Lehmann adjudged the England accolade should go to Joe Root, who scored 460 runs at 57.5 and became the No1 ranked batsman in the world. A personal choice would have been Stuart Broad, whose 21 wickets at 20 apiece showed a class above anyone else on display, but this is not to quibble. Root has grown immensely as a player since he lost his place in Sydney not yet two years ago.
This really has been a strange series with not even a hint of a close match: England by 169 runs at Cardiff; Australia by 405 at Lord’s; England by eight wickets and an innings and 78 at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge respectively; and now Australia’s final redemptive win. As in 2009, when England won the second of four successive home Ashes series, the statistic belie the result. This time Australia have scored 2,565 runs against 2,365 by England and taken 81 wickets against 80 by England. Which goes to show how statistics do not always tell the full story. When it mattered, England bowled and caught superbly and were more able to play the moving ball.
There has also to be criticism of the manner in which the Australian side was selected, not just in terms of the squad but the final XIs, particularly in the crucial fourth Test. The Australian high performance director, Pat Howard, has attempted to make a stout defence of what was really the indefensible.
Clarke does not pick the team but does the batting order and, once he let it be known that he was moving down the order to five, the selectors felt obliged to pick another batsman and omit an allrounder.
They also waited too long to recognise the control that Siddle might bring to the attack, something he was only too happy to demonstrate in the final Test. All of this had been rendered irrelevant once they had been dismissed for 60 but it was still poor thinking.
England now have to contemplate the next stage of their development which will come in less than two months against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates, an entirely different set of challenges, which they may well find harder to handle. They are still searching for an opening partner for Cook, and the way in which Adam Lyth was prone to nicking off (as they call it) makes it slightly more understandable why, probably with this suspicion from their own observations, there was such an imperative to try to rehabilitate Jonathan Trott.
How England cope with Pakistani spin and reverse swing will be one conundrum: how they manage to perform with the ball quite another.
Last time there they bowled superbly and were let down by mediocre batting. This time, while there will still be Broad and Jimmy Anderson, there will be no Graeme Swann or Monty Panesar.
Moeen had a decent series with his offspin and took some important top-order wickets but was given a lesson in the art by Nathan Lyon. Yorkshire’s Adil Rashid, who might be expected to come in, has question marks of skill and temperament hanging over him.
It may well be that the Surrey allrounder Zafar Ansari, a top-order batsman and left-arm spinner, has a part to play.
