After three tests Australia has an unassailable 3-nil lead in the cricket which means we’ve reclaimed the Ashes.
The most famous prize in world cricket (apart from the Peel Valley Bush Cricket Trophy) returns to Australia . . . well, in theory it does.
In practice the Poms refuse to release the Urn, using the lame excuse that it is too fragile to travel – the same excuse that Christopher Skase used, and Cardinal Pell tried to use.
The problem with that argument is that if the Urn is too fragile to travel, why did they allow Alastair Cook on the plane.
If an average of 13.83 in six innings so far does not demonstrate fragility, I don’t know what does.
What about their second most experienced bowler, Stuart Broad. So far he has managed just five wickets in three tests.
To be fair, Australia won this test by an innings, and the last test by 10 wickets, but if the English bowlers had a bit more fire in the belly – they might have made us bat twice.
The Aussie quicks have taken 45 wickets between them. Starc (19), Hazelwood (15) and Cummins (11) have proved to be a lethal pace attack – compared to 31 wickets for the Pommy quicks.
Anderson (12) has tried hard as has Woakes (7). Craig Overton (6) has looked promising in his 2 tests, but Broad (5) and Bell (1) have been disappointing.
In the spinning ranks, Nathan Lyon has taken 14 wickets, while Moeen Ali (3) and Joe Root (1) have not really troubled any Australian batsman.
The Australian bowlers are like a pack of wild dogs, as they circle their prey, slowly wearing down their defences until one of the four delivers the killer blow, snuffing out whatever life is left in the hapless batsmen.
And if the batsman somehow manages to fight off the fearsome threesome, then Lyon moves in for the kill.
If this test had been a boxing match, the referee would have stopped the fight.
The hardest thing to imagine is that prior to this series, Australia was ranked 5 in the world at test level compared to England at 3.
If Australia does manage to complete a 5-0 whitewash, maybe those rankings will reverse.
Five days is a long time in cricket, and England could regroup for the Boxing day test, but given the mental scars inflicted on the batsmen by Starc, Hazelwood, Cummins and Lyon, and on the bowlers by Smith and Mitch Marsh – I wouldn’t be putting of my hard earned on a Pommy comeback.
And remember, there’s no such thing as too much sport.