Australia's brutal, ruthless day

Rarely can a cricket team have played so perfect a match. There was a beauty in England's defeat for the sheer excellence in the way it was conceived and then executed.

The team that was done over in Cardiff, did a better job in return - with bells on. This was vengeance all right: pure, simple and devastating. If any of the great generals had come up with it, we would celebrate the genius. Come to think of it, an admiral did. Nelson's memorable destruction of the combined Spanish and French fleets saved his land. The Australian cricketers have gone a long way to saving theirs from the loss of the urn. The urn, this wretched urn that so consumes us.

The fourth day's play, or the last as it will now be known, was crushing. First the sheer cheek of the batting, then the magnificence of the fast bowling. Steven Smith played leg glances between his legs. The impudence of it. Mitchell Marsh brought the declaration to bear with consecutive mighty blows into the pavilion benches. The embarrassment of it.

Facing a notional target of 509, England survived three overs before lunch but fell apart in the 34 quite ghastly overs that followed.

Picture the dressing-room scene after Michael Clarke's declaration. Imagine first the silence and the shuffling, then the gentle "good lucks" amidst whispered words of shock. Consider the tired limbs and the fractured minds. Think of boots removed and shirts peeled from sweat-drenched torsos. Recall the various paraphernalia of batting - comfortable trousers, clean shirts, half-spike shoes, modified thigh pads, box, arm guards, wrist bands, and for some, chewing gum too. And hear the sound of Velcro as pads and gloves are secured into place. Now the batsmen splash their face with cool water and begin to dance, like boxers, aware that quick feet may save their fate.

The first two leave to louder calls of glory as the seats on the balcony begin to fill. Two, three, maybe four coaches. A fast bowler, the wicketkeeper. Nos. 4 and 5. Inside the room, the physiotherapist works on muscles while energy replacement fluids are slugged back and sandwiches mauled.

Then the windows are filled by washed out faces as the remainder of the crack unit from Cardiff stare nervously to the middle of the world's most famous cricket arena. They are frightened. There is no hiding from this. Three days and a fourth-morning session has taken its toll. Put as positive a spin on it as you like but the facts are stone-cold clear. The door of the game has been slammed shut in England's face.

Three overs later, Alastair Cook and Adam Lyth are back. The fear briefly subsides. In the blink of a million and more eyes, relief has overriden emotion. There are pats on backs and bullish talk of taking it session by session. Only five times in the history of the game has a team made it through five sessions to save a Test. But five it is and the talk will be of six because all sports dressing rooms will tell you that nothing is impossible... if you believe. Thirty-five minutes pass in a flash. Then: "C'mon boys", "Give 'em nothing fellas" and "Get stuck in" rebound around the room.

Cook and Lyth leave, wind down two flights of stairs, past the strict gaze of invasive members, before turning left into the Long Room and right to the double doors and out, into the sunlight and the battle.

Lyth gets a belting delivery from Mitchell Starc. He nicks it. Out. One down.

Cook swishes and edges through to Peter Nevill, whose debut is an impossible dream: the kind of fantasy lived out by children who know no better. The captain bows his head. Not shame but distress.

Now the dressing room is jumpy. No. 5 is fully kitted and ready to go. Six has his pads on. Seven is moving to his changing place to check everything is there and ready. Probably his box is boxed and his thigh pad is strapped in.

Gary Ballance plays a couple of pleasant shots. Phew. Ballance snicks a good ball that has run across him and Nevill clings on. Marsh, the bowler, has another wicket to go with his good match. This is a triumph for the Australian selectors. For Ballance it is anything but. His place is severely threatened. He does not look a No. 3. Not close right now.

Ian Bell and Joe Root. Root and Bell. One starting out. The other more than a hundred Tests in. Bell plays forward to Nathan Lyon. The ball turns and bounces more than he predicted. He is caught at short leg. It looks bad, or soft. Like a lot of Bell's dismissals. Why should this be? At his best, there is something of Sachin Tendulkar in his technical accomplishment and poise. At his worst, he dissolves.

Root pushes to wide of mid-on and calls the single. Ben Stokes reacts late but sets off in time to cross the tape. The trouble is, he glances over his shoulder at the opponent. Watching the ball like this is a schoolboy error. Like a baseball pitcher, Mitchell Johnson has taken aim and fires.

Stokes freaks out and rather than preserve his wicket at any cost, dips his head and shoulders and leaps. Either his conscious or subconscious mind has responded to being hit by the throw. Let's say his conscious, because it is how it looked and how he reacted immediately after. The replay confirms the first suspicion. He has passed the crease but is in the mid-air of a leap. Stokes, the great counterattacker, is run out for nought. The malaise is out of control.

Tea.

Dear God, how has this happened? England are falling apart. It is one thing to lose, another to be humiliated. The dressing room is silent. There is nothing to say. The awfulness and inevitability of defeat is bleeding in. Cook begins to think about the press conferences. The others begin to think about the press.

The break in play brings hope. No idea why. Probably because it is a break in suffering. The morphine effect: disguising the pain but not curing the illness.

First ball after tea, Jos Buttler lets his hands get away from his oddly angled body, hips pointing to wide mid-on. Another nick, another dollar for the debutant stumper in a dream.

Moeen Ali is next. There is no mercy. Johnson's short-pitcher targets his throat. It is a brutal ball. Everything seems brutal. Moeen, the some-days magnificent, fends to short leg. Australia are dancing a merry jig.

Stuart Broad plays some shots. Best of all, he stays in line. On the outside, he has cured his fear after that bad hit to his face against India last summer. The inside is his secret. He prods one to cover. Caught Adam Voges. The vultures are circling.

Remember 2005? Remember how bad that was at Lord's? Remember Michael Vaughan and Andrew Flintoff bowled by nip-back balls from Glenn McGrath that kept a tad low but to which they should have played forward? Think Root now. Mirror image. The last vestige of hope and respect gone. The score: 101 for 9.

James Anderson, a Cardiff hero six years ago, loses his stumps to Josh Hazlewood. The job is done. The match is won.

The Australians have unleashed hell. The margin beggars belief. 405 runs. Cardiff: the pride of England and Wales. Lord's: the fall, and the collateral damage. Edgbaston: eight days to go. Counselling is required for those who wear the three lions. For the ones in a baggy green cap, the beer will flow. The night, the occasion, the match, is theirs. One for all time. The perfect match.