If Australia do what they should by retaining the Ashes, and if they go on to win the series, it will feel thoroughly disingenuous to say that “Australia” did any such thing. Team sports are all about crediting the collective but in this case you can’t credibly do so. Australia’s captain, Tim Paine, started the series with a misfired attempt at a Winston Churchill quote; he could end it more accurately with “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”.
In this case “the few” are a party of one. Three Tests would have been lost without Steve Smith’s interventions, and the Test that he missed with injury was lost. Australian teams have been well beaten in England for 20 years, and in batting terms this is by far the weakest. With one change in personnel, the players eyeing a win would probably have endured a whitewash.
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