England’s despair is largely of their own making

ustralia’s pacemen, supplemented by the late-blossoming Nathan Lyon, are dominant against England batsmen who are struggling to build on good starts

England’s failure to seize key moments proves critical

England have not been pulverised as they were in 2013-14. Theirs is a different kind of pain, the torment of life’s cruellest question: what if? History can also be written by the vanquished, even if few people want to read their version; and though Australia have been the better team, England will reflect on their inability to either recognise or seize a number of key moments. At Brisbane they were 246 for four in the first innings, and then had Australia 209 for seven before the mysterious case of the absent Jimmy Anderson. And they will forever wonder what might have happened had they performed in the first innings at Adelaide as they did in the second.

Bigger contributions needed from Cook and Root

Almost every visualisation of England retaining the Ashes had Alastair Cook scoring runs in industrial quantities. He looked a bit better at Adelaide but 62 runs in four innings is sadly short of par. The same is true of Joe Root’s aggregate of 142, even though he is England’s leading run-scorer and played admirably on the fourth evening of the second Test. Their struggles have put too much pressure on the other batsmen. The decision to move Moeen Ali above Jonny Bairstow, hard to fathom at the start of the series, now looks almost perverse.

Lyon becomes a late-flowering leading man

Nathan Lyon might be cricket’s Bryan Cranston, the character actor who became a leading man late in his career. He has had a profound impact on the series from day one in Brisbane, when he kept England in check on an unexpectedly slow pitch, and has since feasted on a batting line-up that could have been tailored for him: six left-handers, four of them in the top six. Ten of Lyon’s 11 wickets in the series have been lefties. The right-handers have been able to survive against Lyon but no one has been able to attack him: his series economy-rate of 2.29 runs per over is the lowest of his career.

Converting fifties into hundreds wins matches

“Sixties aren’t enough. We need 160s.” Trevor Bayliss’s preseries comments sound increasingly like a clairvoyant’s warning at the start of a horror film. James Vince’s 83 at Brisbane — which seems an age ago, for the team and especially him — is the highest of five 50-plus scores by England batsmen. England have not only struggled to convert fifties into hundreds, they have also been unable to turn starts into fifties.

Australia’s attack offer no respite

England’s batsmen have had three overs of respite in the whole series. Three overs of part-time leg spin bowled by Steve Smith in the second innings at Brisbane. The rest has been a relentless test. There are no weak links in Australia’s four-man attack; there aren’t even any average links. The way Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon complement each other brings to mind England’s Fab Four of 2005. All the Australian bowlers have series averages below 30; all have, at different times, staged the kind of intervention only champions can manage.