Yesterday morning Australia came out to bat with the game in the balance. They lost Brett Lee early, but then added 66 for the ninth wicket. Today England came out to bat with the game in the balance again, only more so. They lost four wickets for 18 runs in 49 balls, a collapse every bit as predictable as Australia's revival. Ay, mate, there's the rub. Australia expect success from their tail, because at No. 7 they have a man whose Test average against England is now higher than Don Bradman's: 98.67 to 89.78. England merely hope for success from theirs, because their three No. 7s in this series - Usman Afzaal, Ian Ward and Craig White - average fractionally more than Devon Malcolm did against Australia: 7.20 to 6.43. Hope springs eternal, but England only had one morning to put things right.

They heroically survived the first four balls, before Ward's vigil came to an end in sadly familiar fashion, beaten not just for pace by Jason Gillespie, but also for class. Since making a compact 39 in his first Test innings, Ward has scraped 90 runs in eight innings. The poor man has looked so out of place you wonder who was bowling to him when he racked up all those runs for England A in the Caribbean over the winter. Fidel Castro perhaps?

But the chocolate-teapot award goes to Robert Croft. OK, so he dismissed Ricky Ponting with his second ball, but Ponting has now made 77 runs in his last 10 Test innings, so it was hardly Scalp of the Year. Croft bowled three overs in the match, made 3 and 0, and generally made spare parts look like centres of attention.

You need luck defending small totals, and England were rightly bemoaning theirs when umpire Venkat, who got most of his lbw decisions wrong in this match, failed to trigger Matthew Hayden after the second ball of the innings hit him plumb in line with off stump. That would have been 0 for 1, and memories of Collapses Past would have begun to haunt the Aussies.

But after that England's bowling was not much better than their batting. If it wasn't short it was wide, and by the time Caddick struck in the sixth over, there were already 36 runs on the board. At 89 for 3 with Steve Waugh stretchered off the field (the equivalent of a football player being carried off in a coffin), England had a chance, but the constant breaks for rain affected their rhythm instead of keeping them fresh, and Australia used each mini-session to chisel elegantly away at the total.

Australia deserved their win, because they dug their way out of almost every hole they fell into. England dug furiously too, but usually in the wrong direction. They won two sessions in the match - that heady Thursday evening, and the Atherton-Trescothick partnership in the second innings - but over three days that's three too few.

Their only consolation is that they have lost to one of the best sides in the history of the game, a team that have now won 19 of their last 21 Tests. Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust, if Glenn don't get you, Jason must.

Lawrence Booth is assistant editor of Wisden.com

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