So how good ARE England?

September 12, 2005: The Ashes are England's, the crowds were celebrating in the streets, and numerous and loud were the English fans claiming their team as the world's number one Test nation. Having defeated Australia, on the back of 18 months of glory, there seemed to be some weight to their words...

December 1, 2005: Less than 3 months later, and not even England's blindly patriotic commentators seem to want to push the case of their countrymen’s world dominance. England have been worn down in Pakistan, and even with the help of some very ordinary umpiring decisions, have been made to look very average. All of this begs the question - how good ARE England?

In the hype after September, many things were spoken about regarding England's victory: the amazing all-round efforts of Andrew Flintoff, the strangling bowling of Ashley Giles, the dominant batting of Kevin Pieterson, the bounce & aggression of Stephen Harmison... and so on and so forth. English journalists, starved for so long of any victories over Australia found it all a little too much, and all players who took part in the series were placed upon pedestals and worshipped as heroes. Their Australian counterparts doing their best to not seem like bad sports, commended England on their victory, and demanded the Australian team make immediate changes to avoid anything like this happening again. The resulting articles though left out or understated a few important details of the Ashes.

1) Australia weren't at their best. Anyone who tries to tell you the contrary quite simply hasn't seen Ricky Ponting in good form, Glenn McGrath fully fit, or Adam Gilchrist smearing the best bowlers in cricket to all parts of the ground. Much was written about how the Aussies played "only as good as they were allowed to", but this is only half the truth. Coming into the series, Australia had rested their players, correctly anticipating a gruelling series. This lay off after crushing victories over New Zealand did them no favours though, and with the limited tour games they had arranged, at no point before the Tests did they really regain the momentum they'd had before leaving the Southern Hemisphere.

2) England benefited from a lot of umpiring decisions. No one would go as far as to suggest that there was anything sinister about the 50/50 calls almost always going the way of the home team, but the end result was the same as if there were shenanigans afoot. No team can win a close contest if the tight calls continually go against them. Damien Martyn was the unluckiest of Australia's batsmen, and Shane Warne's tally of 40 wickets for the series would have been even higher had there been a better showing by the adjudicators.

3) England's victory was at home, on pitches prepared for their players. Take a look at all of the victories they achieved in the 18 months preceding the Ashes, and the only away series win of note was against South Africa, a team struggling to hold onto 5th in the ICC Test championship. England were defeated in their tour of Sri Lanka, and weren't forced to tour Australia or India. Faced now with Pakistan on their home turf, England's mediocrity abroad has become apparent.

So how good are England? When things go their way, they've shown they can bring home the silverware. In the face of strong opposition, however, without the benefit of their own groundskeepers, media contingent, and army of supporters, they seem to be fairly average. Over the next 18 months though, they have the opportunity to prove this wrong. Best of luck England, you'll continue to need it.