The end of another Ashes summer and, hallelujah, no more having to swallow Andy Caddick's insipid, infuriating, incoherent whingeing. Caddick had seemed a humble, contented man for 18 months or so, and his bowling, not by accident, veered between very good and venomous. Yet all it took was for that whiff of stardust to go to his head, and we were all reminded why the Alec Stewart regime quarantined him like an infected sheep in the first place.

On the field against Australia he bowled badly, squabbled with umpires and regularly had steam puffing out of those Herbie Collins ears of his, flapping at the injustice of it all, as if God wore baggy green and a grudge against Richard Hadlee lookalikes. (A key difference between Caddick and Hadlee, a sober, unsmiling Einstein, is that the Kiwi who played for New Zealand is probably more fun to hang out with.)

Off the field Caddick's column in The Independent on Sunday - dictated to Stephen Brenkley for £500 a pop - has been a beacon of preposterous self-pity. For Caddick every Sunday is a rainy Sunday, and there are injuries, the weather, his bowling end, the toss and the pitch to be blamed for England's woes. Everything, in fact, but England's own inadequacies.

Let's start with injuries. He began the series promisingly by declaring: "Injuries have hindered and haunted us. But we must not dwell on them." If only. A week later he was moaning "injuries have hurt our team"; the weekend after that England's balance had been "shifted by sudden, dramatic unavailabilities." By Trent Bridge he was really warming to his theme: "With our injury list we would have had to possess depths to the bottom of the Tasman Sea."

Now, with the wounds still bleeding, is not the time to name names. Suffice to say that AB, Rod Marsh and Ian Healy played through countless knocks and, whenever anything really serious was wrong, they made sure they didn't tell the doc. Graeme Wood batted on uncomplainingly for years, even though repeated blows from West Indian quicks had turned his hands the same shade as the phantom. And then there's Hop-along Waugh ...

The Weather. At Lord's the trigger for England's first-day fluster was "we had to stop and start three times". Now let's get real: it was the weather which made The Miracle of Headingley '01 possible. Rain drowned the whitewash.

His bowling end. Here's Caddick when Headingley looked a lost cause: "When we took the new ball I did not come on from the Pavilion End ... the end from which I have always done damage". Mate, a word of advice. Outbowl Darren Gough, not a big ask this summer, and choose your own end.

The Toss. "All future England captains [should be] sent to Las Vegas," Caddick announced on July 22. "England, when they might have needed a smidgen of luck have been denied it. The toss embodies that." Here is the ultimate furphy. The toss is one of cricket's five-percenters; not since the days of uncovered pitches has a side lost a Test by losing the toss. The 1921 and 1948 Australians both lost four tosses out of five, like England this summer, yet still won 3-0 and 4-0 respectively. And it's hard to imagine Warwick Armstrong whimpering in defeat.

Finally, the pitch. "What we would have liked at Headingley was a hard, green surface. What we got was a bare pitch with tufts of grass and indentations. Peculiar it was." Spoilt you are. And this: "The ball suddenly refused to do what it had done before. No swing for us." Gee Andy, was that because (a) Martians invaded Leeds and swapped pitches while you and Goughie were in the showers, or (b) Australia's fast bowlers are better.

It would be hilarious were it not so sad. The worry is that England have just been slaughtered yet again by Australia, and haven't learnt a thing about why.

Chris Ryan is managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly. His column appears every Tuesday.

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