Australia defeats words with actions to outclass England and romp to Ashes glory

It ended as it was always supposed to, with a scrum of Australian cricketers in the middle of the Adelaide Oval, leaping and hugging and screaming in celebration of Ashes victory.

• As it happened: Australia wins Ashes on dramatic final day in Adelaide
• Quick hits: Ponting slams 'dopey' England star as Lyon goes down
• Lyon injured: Star spinner limps off the Adelaide Oval 
• Scorecard: Check out the full scores and stats for the third Ashes Test

The overnight headlines pitched a foregone conclusion and Australian coronation, and had you slept through everything that happened in the four hours before that mid-pitch convergence, you may have assumed you missed the procession.

But boy did that get hairy for a little while. 

England's backbone, belatedly fortified, took Australia about as far as it could have ever hoped to. With little more than a bit of determination and some respectful batting, England whittled the chase to under 200, under 150, under 100, all the way into the pits of Australian stomachs.

The initial partnership between Jamie Smith and Will Jacks was perfectly paced in the opening hour, and an hour more of those two would have set a tantalising platform for England.

In that sense Smith's shot, a slog across the line to a Mitchell Starc length ball, was as bad as any from an Englishman this series. From there the end crept closer, accelerated by Marnus Labuschagne's absurd catch to dismiss Jacks.

The tension evaporated from Adelaide Oval and the crowd loosened up again, finally erupting as the 10th wicket fell. An 82-run win, a 3-0 series lead and job comprehensively done by Australia.

A series that had been dissected and analysed from every conceivable angle, months before a single ball had been bowled, has been settled inside 11 days of cricket.

This Ashes series was afforded an extraordinary build-up but has suffered a rather ordinary fate.

Basically, any time England comes to play in Australia this century, except for that one 2010/11 summer that must surely stand as one of the most remarkable outlying achievements in cricket history, the tourists are beaten inside three Tests and usually around a dozen days.

So why are we surprised this time? Why did it feel like this one might be different, competitive at best and a potential ambush at worst? Why were we ever worried about Pat Cummins's Australia?

One explanation is that Australia gladly ceded the narrative in those feverish months before play began. Nearly all of the discourse came from and about England, its style of play and the fantastic opportunity that lay before them.

A selection of English ex-players and pundits suggested this Australian team was especially weak, the worst in 15 years in some estimations.

The Australians never bothered with a rebuttal. Questions largely focused on injured bowlers and an unsettled batting line-up, and how they could possibly measure up against the revolutionaries en route to their shores.

Mitchell Starc never came out publicly with a warning that he was primed and ready to claim the summer as his own. Alex Carey spent no time speaking of the 2023 furore that surrounded him, or that he was in a perfect placed to produce his own statement pieces in response.

The Aussies kept their head down. But they were there, and they heard everything.

Every Long Room curse, every moral victory, every "too old, too slow". It's not often the Australian Test cricket team is underestimated, but it rather suited them this time around.

There was reason for concern though, what with Cummins breaking down with a mysterious back injury in September and Josh Hazlewood a hamstring on the eve of the Ashes.

Hazlewood, it should be noted, was in astounding form before his injury. Against India in a series of under-the-radar limited overs games, Hazlewood was bowling as well as he ever had. Given the flaws that would soon be exposed in the English batting, there's no telling the damage he could have done.

Cummins missed the first two Tests and Nathan Lyon was sat in the second one. Usman Khawaja — pre-series the only top order batter assured of his spot — was ruled out of the second Test with injury and only played the third because Steve Smith, the side's best batter, went down with vertigo and couldn't play.

We're talking about a crisis here. The heart and soul, not to mention a significant proportion of the skill, of this team has been missing and will remain absent for the entirety of the series.

It hasn't mattered. Australia has been dominant, a class above in every way that matters. And that is genuinely incredible.

Much of that is down to the well documented and fundamental flaws within the England side, but it's equally true that this Australia is remarkable.

Every player, at one point or another, has done his duty in elevating his side above the opponent. Some, like Starc, Head and Carey, have done so more regularly and spectacularly, but there have been no passengers in a team whose depth has been tested and proven.

Australia has been excellent in the field, led by Carey behind the stumps. The excellence has peaked at critical times, like in the Josh Inglis run-out of Stokes in Brisbane, the Smith catch at slip two days later on the same ground or Labuschagne's grabs here in Adelaide.

A lot has been made of "the moments", the ones Australia has owned and England has let slip, and though a focus on nebulous "moments" is an oversimplification, brilliance in the field changes games and it seems only one team is capable of producing it.

The series will move to Melbourne with Australia's thirst unquenched, but with England perhaps now emboldened to save some face and cash in on some dead rubbers — we won't use the actual phrase for what's on offer here for England again, but it loosely rhymes with coral hickories.

Australia has put everything into these three Tests and that has come at a cost, with Lyon now hamstrung and surely done for the summer, and both Cummins and Starc sore.

More headaches await the selectors, another reshuffled team with a few square pegs in round holes. The sort of things that would have thrown a poorer group asunder, but not this lot.

This is a special side that has achieved just about everything there is to achieve in the game, while doing so with more class and respectability than any Australian cricket team in generations.

They won't soon be underestimated again.