Fifth Test: England won by an innings and 83 runs (Australia 280 & 281, England 644). England win the series 3-1.

The big prize was decided in Melbourne, when England guaranteed themselves at least a series draw and thus retained the Ashes. Even so, a series victory down under – and by such a ridiculous margin – may have felt almost as good for the English.

Somehow, the storyline of this game followed almost exactly England’s wins in Adelaide and Melbourne. The Melbourne Test had Australia collapsing to 98 in their first innings, the Adelaide Test had England’s incredible 620 declaration, but the Sydney version had pretty much the same story of dominance. Australia’s top order couldn’t get going on Day 1, their bottom order managed to fight back to get to 280, and then England batted for days and days. Alastair Cook, Ian Bell, and Matt Prior all scored over 100 runs for England in their innings, with captain Andrew Strauss tossing in a quick-fire 60 at the beginning to set the visitors on their way. In contrast, Australia’s best score in either innings was Steve Smith‘s pointless 54 in the second, made after all hope had gone for the Aussies.

Over the same period of this match, India – the top-ranked team in the world – were over in South Africa, the second-ranked team in the world. The two teams, tied 1-1 in their three-Test series, were busy fighting to a draw in the final match, a game that came pretty close to defining what I (in my limited experience) think of as a normal Test. India led by two runs, 364-362, after both teams had batted once. South Africa spent the fourth day building up a lead of 339, then turned around and tried to bowl India out on the fifth day. India, uninterested in going for the victory (which would mean a very high possibility of a loss), instead chose to grit out the entire day, scoring just 166 but losing only three of the ten wickets South Africa would have needed for the victory.

That, in my mind, is how Test cricket is supposed to go. You play five days, you score almost two hundred more runs than the other team, and it ends up tied because somehow a five-day match, encompassing 30 hours of cricket, still isn’t enough time to decide anything.

All of which makes England’s dominance that much more amazing. Going into the series, England was ranked third in the world, Australia fourth, with very little separating the two. The Aussies, though they’d been having problems of all sorts, had just only narrowly lost to India in India. And England hadn’t been successful on a tour Down Under since 1986-87.

And now: three innings victories for the English. Australia scored 481 in their first innings of the series, then never got above 309 in any of their subsequent nine. Meanwhile, England scored more than 500 runs in an innings four times, including two scores over 600. The Sydney Test was just an exclamation point on what was a surprising show of England dominance.

That’s that, then. England win 3-1. The two teams will play some one-day matches – two 20-over affairs and seven one-dayers, I think – but I’m not sure I particularly care. I suppose it’s just an exercise to get both teams warmed up for the Cricket World Cup, which is contested via one-day matches, and begins at the end of February.

Either way, the big part of this series is over. I’ll probably wrap the whole thing up with one long post later, but for now: England win. It wasn’t close.