A Times leader today (£) celebrates England's retention of the Ashes - and who can blame them? England's dominance of the series has been fully deserved; I extend my congratulations to the team and its supporters. The Times is concerned to stress that this achievement should now be used as 'a staging post on the way to sustained excellence', but you will understand if I put that hope behind me without further comment. My interest is in the paper's explanation of England's success:
England have been superior in every respect, with bat and ball and in the field... Australia played badly, and the country's decline is an unavoidable part of the story...
I concur with all of that and therefore with the last bit: Australia's cricketing decline. I think the present series allows us to close the open judgement I recorded in February 2007 after Australia's 5-0 whitewash of England then just concluded:
In the English summer of 2005, a thrilling and unforgettable series made it look as if the period of Australian dominance might be over. But it turned out not to be so, the recent clean sweep in Australia making 2005 look like an exception, narrowly achieved, rather than the first light of a new dawn. But who can tell? The 2006-7 result, even in taking the general tendency of almost two decades to its extreme limit, may in the end turn out to have been a final flourish - with the retirement of Shane Warne an appropriate marker for, as well as one of the principal causes of, this closure.
Final flourish was right. In 2009 England won back the Ashes but, as in 2005, the result was so close that the relative strengths of Australia and England could still look rather uncertain. Not any more. Not only is the period of Australian ascendancy well and truly over, but the national team looks to be falling apart. It needs two opening batsmen since right now it has no real opening batsman of appropriate toughness and technical skill; it could do with a middle order with some resilience, having at the moment only Hussey in that role; Australia needs a good spin bowler, and some fast bowlers more impressive and consistent than those they have; and Ricky Ponting - a great, great player - is out of confidence and out of form. So everything needs attention, and I don't know, from here, what young cricketing potential there is to begin the rebuilding process. But a full rebuilding is the size of the problem. The Ashes wheel, as the saying goes, has turned. I look forward to its turning again.