Welcome to Australia, Welcome to Sleep Deprivation

The start of Ashes series can be captivating, exciting and emotional. This can lead to a strange type of nostalgic reflectiveness.

As I climbed into bed this morning, three overs in, Strauss already gone and CMJ broadcasting to the world, I found myself thinking about the fact that I'd been doing this sort of thing since before anyone from either side was born. When England pitched up at Brisbane to be sacrificed to Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in November 1974, satellite television hadn't been invented and radios were still sometimes called transistors. I loved it. Still do.

Conclusion: I started bloody young, I'm getting older, and it's a good job I wasn't playing. There are many reasons for this - not least the fact that I'm not a very good cricketer - but also the awareness that too much emotion can affect the way you play.

It's hard to say whether this was a factor in what was, for England, a poor day, but if anyone had become even slightly carried away with the favourable predictions and lavish publicity, today's events will have brought them sharply back to earth.

Australian sides come, and Australian sides go, but they always, always, compete very hard. Today Peter Siddle was the embodiment of this attitude - fast, direct, immune to pressure and frequently successful. No matter what you have going for you (and England are currently very fortunate to have Ian Bell), going to Australia and winning Test matches is never easy.

Judgement is suspended until both sides have batted once, but, with one day gone, Australia hold the aces.

When the Music Stops

Ricky Thomas Ponting is, in more ways than you can count, a typical Australian Test cricketer. Indeed, he embodies the emotional makeup of virtually any successful professional sportsman. He doesn't do sentiment, or regret, or wistfulness. Such feelings are the privilege of the retired player, who can afford to look back at his career in anger, sorrow or pride with the certain knowledge that it can't blunt the sharpness of the competitive response that's vital for survival at the highest level of the game.

But Ponting wouldn't be human if he didn't reflect a little on the way things have changed for Australia in recent times. This is a man who's played nearly all his career in a team without peer; for much of that time he has been its leader and its best batsman. Now, as the autumn of his own great career draws in, he finds himself in charge of a team which just can't do what it used to. He knows it, his team-mates know it, and now other teams know it too.

Ponting said back in the English summer that he was relishing the different challenges that captaining a lesser side presented. I've no doubt he meant what he said at the time, but that was before they were beaten by Pakistan at Headingley; their two recent defeats, the second ultimately comfortable, to India have nailed the coffin lid shut on the invincible years. The music has stopped, and Ponting is still holding the parcel. The only trouble is that he doesn't know what to do with it.

While the batting is still respectable, it is far, far more vulnerable than it ever used to be, and his attack is too dependent on a spinner he doesn't trust and a quickie so erratic that it would be a shock if he really trusted himself. For all the optimism, promise and doggedness of Watson, George and Hilfenhaus, they're just not good enough to carry an attack, especially in unfamiliar conditions. There are alternatives - Bollinger, Siddle, Lee, Smith - but nobody capable of intimidating opponents with their sheer excellence in the way that was second nature to Warne and McGrath.

For me the outcome of the Ashes series still appears magnificently uncertain. Home advantage will tell, and, as everyone knows, Australians are never beaten. England's batting is a concern, but they will have seen nothing whatever to worry them over the past two weeks.

For every uncertainty, though, there is a certainty. While today's outstanding innings was Cheteshwar Pujara's first fifty for India, it sure as hell won't be his last.

Dreadful

Notwithstanding the coruscating but ultimately irrelevant batting of Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann this morning, just about the best that can be said about England's dreadful performance at Headingley is that they held their catches. There was little else, apart perhaps from Stuart Broad's six wickets, although these only came after a long period during which large amounts of unrelieved dross were served up to a series of grateful Australian batsmen.

This has been a series of punch and counter-punch, but now Australia have all but floored England, and it'll be astonishing if England can come back to win at The Oval.

Much the strangest and most surprising aspect of this massacre has been the way in which, like some of the first Test at Cardiff, it's felt like being transported back to any of the series between 1989 and 2001 in which Australia routinely humiliated England. The interim contests at Lord's and Edgbaston, in which England carved out an advantage which looked like it might see them home, might as well never have happened.

It always looked as though England might be in trouble if Australia started to bowl well. In this match they have, with the returning Stuart Clark, the resurgent Mitchell Johnson, the resilient Peter Siddle and the redoubtable Ben Hilfenhaus holding the aces. The fact that this renaissance has been coupled with some awful batting and naive bowling by the home side has cooked England's goose very thoroughly indeed.

Underlying causes are difficult to pinpoint at times like these, but, in this match, and at times earlier in the series, the key distinction between the sides has been the level of discipline, maturity and technical expertise displayed, in particular, by the Australian batsmen. They seem to be less inclined to believe their own publicity and they understand the game - and their part in it - in a way which hardly any of England's players (Strauss fully excepted) do. In part this is because players like Marcus North are older and have been around the block (if not in Test cricket) in a way that Bopara and Bell simply haven't. Although, given the way that England players tend to think and react, you wouldn't bet on either of them ever emulating the type of all-round class which North has shown over the past few weeks (let alone that of Ponting or Clarke).

So many words have been written about the contrasts between the countries' systems (most recently by Justin Langer) that I'm reluctant to go there once again, but it's that which is at the heart of England's failure to produce large numbers of players who can perform consistently well at the game's highest level.

Is anything much ever likely to change? Even if you're at Headingley and the bookies are offering you 500-1, don't bet on it.

Keeping on Coming

Test match days are long - at least six hours, or 90 overs, depending on who's counting - and so much always depends on which side's players show the most stamina.

Often it's not just about physical fortitude (though God knows you need that), but mental as well. The ability to take the knocks but retain your original level of focus and desire into the last session of the day.

Something I've liked about Peter Siddle ever since I first saw him has been his ability to just keep on coming, regardless of what type of day he's had. Today it wasn't great, but he was still bustling in late in the Cardiff afternoon and was rewarded with the late wickets of Prior and Flintoff, scalps which left honours all but even.

Kevin Pietersen, by contrast, didn't stay focused, and it cost him and his side. His misjudgements at Edgbaston and Kingston were, perhaps, debatable, but today there can be no argument. His moronic stroke was central in allowing Australia to sneak back into a day that was drifting away from them.

It's one thing having the strength to hang in there, but often it's opponents' weaknesses which give you the chance to show it.

Today, for Australia, was one such day.

Almost Over

After what seems like years (probably because it is) of sometimes tedious stability and domination, one of the most interesting things about Australia's current situation is seeing their new players and wondering how they'll do in the long run.

It's hard to comment on at least one of the debutants in the current game, Doug Bollinger, as I've seen little of him and he's only taken one wicket so far, while the kneejerk impresson of the other, Andrew McDonald, is that he looks a decent operator but is highly unlikely to pull up any trees at the highest level.

I do feel, though, as if I ought to apologize to Peter Siddle, who I wrote off after he and the now-departed Jason Krejza were taken apart in the second innings in Perth, even though he impressed me during the Indian tour. The same qualities I noticed then - chiefly the ability to just keep on coming, whatever sort of hammering he's getting - together with plenty of raw pace, were in evidence during his first innings five in the current match, and I get the impression that he might just develop into a useful international bowler, especially if he can enhance his ability to move the ball. At the moment I'm not sure how well he'll do on slower pitches, but, as he now seems very likely to come to England later in the year, we'll find out soon enough.

Right, that should ensure that Bollinger and McDonald conquer the world while Siddle disappears into obscurity, but I will make one final, much more obvious, prediction.

Matthew Hayden's Test career is almost over.

As Far As You Can Get

When I last posted, at lunchtime on Friday, it looked, as I wrote, as though all the problems in Perth were South Africa's. Three days on and it's Australia who have a bit more to think about.

I'm unconvinced that there's anything terminal about Australia's relative decline, but, with Lee struggling and Siddle and Krejza about as far from what's required as you can get, they're certainly 'coming back to the pack' at a rate of knots. The batting looks stronger, but Hayden will need runs soon if he's going to make it to England, and, if he doesn't, a further foundation stone of the great era will have gone.

At the moment next summer's Ashes rubber is looking a more enticing prospect by the day. With Australia weakening and England plodding along as they do (but with the prospect of two confidence-boosting series against the West Indies to come), it could be the most closely-fought series between the two sides since 1972.

As for South Africa, well, in the end, they did it at a canter. The signs are that de Villiers is now fulfilling his immense promise and it was great to see him partnered by the debutant JP Duminy, who played a cool and confident role in the chase.

Incidentally, I once saw Duminy acting as twelfth man for Devon at Bovey Tracey.

Which is about as far from the WACA as you can get.

All You Can Ask

After Friday's Tendulkar-fest, yesterday was the day when Australia came face-to-face with what life's increasingly going to be like in the post-McGrath/Warne era.

Just after tea, with Ganguly and Dhoni going well, and Shane Watson and Cameron White bowling, you had the feeling that, for the first time in a long time, an Australian side in the field were toothless. Watson and White are players with many strengths, mostly with the bat (and they're probably nice guys too) but integral parts of a good quality Test attack they're not and never will be.

Okay, Australia subsequently wrapped the Indian first innings up relatively quickly, but today the game went away from them again, to the point where India must be strong favourites to go one-up in the series.

The Indian bowling attack has impressed on a bland Mohali pitch; Zaheer got his rabbit Hayden again with a neat piece of variety, Ishant Sharma oozes promise every time you see him and the new leggie, Amit Mishra, has been cool and threatening, finishing this morning with a debut five-for.

As I said, the Australian attack has looked more limited, but a word for the game's other debutant, Peter Siddle, whose powerful, consistent action, sharp pace and muscular aggression has stamped him as a bowler who'll hurry a few people up on faster tracks.

And there have been people there to watch it. Not huge numbers but enough to give the impression that it matters.

And that, these days, is all you can ask.