Cricket: Clash of the titans - round two

England's Andrew Flintoff (centre) and Paul Collingwood (right) celebrate winning the Ashes series at the Oval. Picture / Reuters

This from the latest Ripleys files: People are starting to talk about England winning in Australia next year without attracting so much as a sideways glance from mental health professionals.

The startling trend has swept through Britain and has even gained a slender foothold in Australia, where to voice such alarmist views would normally prompt a visit from either a lynch-mob or the Immigration Service.

But now that England managed the improbable this week, all eyes are starting to turn to the near-impossible at the end of next year, and the chances of an even bigger, and more epic series, Down Under.

Of course, England and Australia will have plenty on their plates in the interim, not least next month's Super Series, but you can almost hear cricket tragics salivating over the 2006 match-up.

It's world cricket's toughest mission, but it's the contest that England must win to demonstrate unequivocally their superiority over the Australians, and prove that this week's achievement was more than a one-off.

Only four England teams have won in Australia since the end of the war, the latest in 1986-87 when Mike Gatting's side retained the Ashes with a 2-1 series win over Allan Border's combination.

Len Hutton's tourists won 3-1 in 1954-55, and Mike Brearley's 1978-79 squad took full advantage of Australia's rebel suspensions to humiliate their hosts 5-1 and build on their success of 1977.

Undoubtedly the most impressive effort was produced by the side led by Ray Illingworth in 1970-71, when he became the first post-war England captain to regain the Ashes in Australia, winning the seven-test series 2-0.

Illingworth's success, coming after a sometimes bitterly-fought series, was the first Ashes victory for England since 1956, and when asked about the degree of difficulty this week he had a simple message for the team: "It is a hell of a lot harder to win over there than it is here. I can tell them that for nothing."

For all that, there is no doubt that Australia foundered badly in England, and may only now be awaking to the fact that they have been steering in the wrong direction for too long, and that solutions may not be thick on the ground.

The side have been aging and the much-vaunted depth of Australia talent appears nothing like it was a decade ago, as demonstrated when the raw and erratic Shaun Tait was forced into the last two Ashes tests.

As Age cricket writer Greg Baum explained this week, the problems for Australia run far deeper than just a temporary loss from the present international players.

"Young stars are nurtured and mollycoddled in the under-19s, but at the same time, aging vets on sinecures, but with no further prospect of test selection, are allowed to clog up the Pura Cup," he wrote. "This way, a generation has been lost and the role and relevance of the state competition threatened - and to think that we used to look down our noses at county cricket."

Whether Australia can quickly bounce back from the setback is anyone's guess, but they will have plenty of opportunities in the near future, first with the Super Series against the Rest of the World XI, and then with home series against the West Indies and South Africa, and a tour of the Republic.

At the same time, England's new-found confidence will be challenged during tours of Pakistan and then India, before they return home to host Sri Lanka next May and Pakistan in July.

After that, it's more or less a straight lead-in to what will be the most anticipated Ashes series in living memory, and another chance for England to exorcise the ghosts of the past 16 years.

As Ashes hero Simon Jones told Sporting Life yesterday: "We want to keep the Ashes, defend them next year and keep them as long as we can.

"We've won the Ashes . . . it's going to be even harder to retain them. But I think we have got the squad to do it."

TEST RANKINGS*

1. Australia 127
2. England 119
3. India 111
4. South Africa 100
5. New Zealand 100
6. Sri Lanka 98
7. Pakistan 95
8. West Indies 74
9. Zimbabwe 28
10. Bangladesh 6

(*as at September 12)