Ashes in the bag, but series still at stake

6:38 AM Cricket No Comments

The Ashes have been retained, but there's still so much at stake as the series moves on to the New Year Test in Sydney. Another performance as crushing as either Adelaide or Melbourne proved to be, and England will have triumphed 3-1 - a margin of victory befitting a campaign that has been as meticulously crafted as any in the long history of Anglo-Australian rivalry. Another slip-up of the sort that threatened to derail them in Perth, however, and the series will be squared at 2-2, the first such scoreline since 1972, but one that would leave the Aussies feeling decidedly chipper after one of their most exacting home summers since the mid-1980s.

All the signs point to England. They are settled, confident and - despite a few justified hangovers on the morning after the Ashes were retained - supremely focused on a speck in the middle distance which reads "World No. 1". They've got a long way to go yet, but seeing as they have not lost a series of any description since September 2009, they are well on their way to that aim. Australia, by contrast, have just succumbed to their fifth Test defeat in seven matches, and are reeling not only from the sheer destructiveness of England's performance at the MCG, but the implications of the collateral damage as well, with Ricky Ponting sidelined for the first time in six years.

Nevertheless, we've been here before in Ashes cricket. Twenty-four years ago at this very ground, the seeds of Australia's renaissance were sown at the precise moment that England believed they had laid them out for the rest of the decade. When the unheralded offspinner Peter Taylor claimed eight wickets on debut to secure a consolation 55-run victory in the fifth Test of the 1986-87 series, it was assumed it was a case of dead cat bounce for an out-muscled outfit. On the contrary, that victory would be the first of 12 Aussie wins without reply in Ashes cricket, with their run finally ending at The Oval in 1993.

The lesson is simple. When Australia are down, they need to be kept there at all costs, because no side is more adept at improbable regeneration. The odds may be stacked against them, but if England dare to turn up without their fullest focus, the scope for an upset still exists.