And so the Ashes are over. After three Tests, and just 12 days of cricket, Australia have taken an unassailable 3-0 lead in the series.
It was little more than a meek surrender on the third day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground from England, and erased any dash of hope the team had conjured up in the field the previous day.
Day 2 saw England delayed at their hotel, and they realistically should have put in their worst performance of the series so far given their likely mental state having had their morning’s preparation disrupted and being on the back foot quite heavily in the match and series.
But they bowled well - led by James Anderson in what will undoubtedly be his final Test on the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground - and managed to knock the Aussies over with a lead of just 82 on the board.
But then they came out to bat.
By the time stumps rolled around, they were already four wickets down, and within an hour and a half on Day 3, it was over, with Ben Stokes the first to depart and wickets falling at regular intervals thereafter.
There was no want or desire to defend wickets from the tourists, with Joe Root the only player to make it past 11 in the innings, scoring 28 before, like so many of his teammates, being brought undone by debutant Scott Boland.
Boland will now be incredibly difficult to drop for the fourth Test ahead in Sydney, despite the likely desire of the selectors to bring Josh Hazlewood back in, and play Mitchell Swepson on a pitch which could turn in the New South Wales state capital.
But Australia’s future selections are hardly the talking point to come out of this match given the way England folded like a house of cards. The pitch may have done a bit, and Australia’s bowlers deserve plenty of credit for the way they went about their work, but England’s rapid collapse and demise throughout this series more broadly hasn’t been fit to be called something a Test team might do.
While players will survive this series based solely on the fact the tourists can’t - and wouldn’t - fly replacements in with just two matches to play, their entire batting order now appears to be on notice given the way they have surrendered time and time again throughout the series.
Hasseb Hameed has failed six times out of six to start the series, while Zak Crawley looked out of his depth in his first start replacing Rory Burns.
Crawley will be given a longer run, but these failures have been building all year given Root was the only Englishman to have scored more than 500 runs so far in the calendar year, despite England playing plenty of Test cricket.
Hameed has been woeful in Australia, while Burns has had a prolonged shot at Test cricket without much success.
Dawid Malan, like Root, will be safe given their efforts in Brisbane and Adelaide, while Ben Stokes is a veteran of the team and will hold his spot.
Ollie Pope was dropped for this Test and doesn’t look likely to be recalled for Sydney, Hobart or beyond, but his replacement did nothing better with Bairstow managing some runs in the first dig, but not enough to make a meaningful impact on the game.
Bairstow could yet take over the keeping gloves though given the objectively poor form of Jos Buttler with both bat and gloves, regularly costing England.
The bottom line would appear to be that only two three players in England’s top seven are safe moving forward long-term, and like so many teams before them, playing in Australia against a red-hot home side has completely and utterly broken the tourists into a shell of their former self.
