In his latest exclusive diary entry for CricInfo, Alec Stewart confirms his availability for the rest of the present series, and adds his voice to calls for Australia to take the original Ashes urn home.

Any series that I take part in, or game that I play in – whether it's for England, Surrey or whoever, I want to win, and look forward to winning. It's the sixth time I've played in an Ashes series, and the sixth time I haven't won the Ashes. Two things have really disappointed me this time. Firstly, we haven't been able to pick our strongest side; that's not an excuse, it's a fact. More disappointingly, we haven't played to the level that I know we're capable of reaching, which brought us success in the five series leading up to the Ashes.

As to the Trent Bridge game itself, the talk in the papers was about bad decisions, but they happen. Throughout the game's history, umpires' decisions, shots played by batsmen, balls delivered by bowlers, haven't always been right.

Once we lost Michael Atherton on Friday it was extraordinary how quickly the wickets went down. We'd had a good partnership going and then lost four wickets, which put a massive dent in our chances of posting a winning total of 250-plus. They had a bit of a scare at 80 for 3 with Steve Waugh getting injured, but Mark Waugh and Damien Martyn dashed our hopes of victory with a positive display of batting.

As always when we lose the Ashes, which is currently every other year, the media and others look to re-build English cricket. "Everything's wrong with it, no one can play, get rid of all this lot and start again." If you sit down and look at what's happened, and how we move forward, my name will crop up as the oldest cricketer in the England side. But I think it was Linford Christie who said that age is just a number – you should always be picking players on ability. At the same time, you should be looking to improve the side and have an eye on the future. I'm still very much available to play in the next two Test matches. I've had a chat with David Graveney this morning about that, and will be meeting him again soon to talk about the future. Thoughts of retirement are not in my mind at present.

In the short term, it would be nice if the selectors were able to pick from the strongest available squad for Headingley. That's obviously subject to Hussain, Thorpe, Vaughan and Hoggard all being available. We can then see how we compete against them. I don't want people saying the series is dead. Both Australian and England players are on record as saying that any Test match they play is just as important, whether the series is dead or alive. As to the wider picture, we should bring in players here and there, but not go for a wholesale upheaval. We've all talked about the huge gulf between county and Test cricket. The jump from county cricket to a Test match against Australia is the biggest, so for any new player it's going to be hard. We need to keep looking for the players with the potential to make the step up.

Personally I believe that Australia should now take the original Ashes urn back home. They deserve it, and the Australian public should have the chance to see exactly what their team's been winning, possibly on display in the ACB offices.

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