Taylor clutches his silver lining

Davis Cup: Australia power to their predictable victory as Britain's captain sees the steepness of the learning curve

That remarkable British ability to unearth solace, stimulation even, from the most comprehensive of sporting defeats was once more evident yesterday in Australia, the land where our cricketers so recently plumbed the depths of humiliation. This time it was the tennis players' turn, defeated 3-0 with one day still to go in the Davis Cup World Group tie in Sydney.

The Aussies, never tardy to rub noses in dirt, were spot on again. Their green-and-gold clad cheerleading chorus, the Fanatics, carried the T-shirt message "200 years ago the Poms came here to get flogged – nothing has changed". The flogging was officially rounded off with the 6-1 6-3 4-6 6-2 doubles defeat of Arvind Parmar and Miles Maclagan by Lleyton Hewitt and Todd Woodbridge, though two more by-now meaningless singles matches were due for completion early this morning.

To win even a set in this embarrassing mismatch of an occasion was more than Britain's captain, Roger Taylor, would have honestly expected. After all, his only two players of genuine class, Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski, are still on the mend following operations and the quality of back-up, as has been apparent for some time, is not of the standard to merit a place in the competition's premier section.

Still, Taylor was able to detect glimmers in the heavy overcast, as his predecessors have been required to do more or less since the days when Fred Perry lorded it. Of the two youngsters, Alex Bogdanovic and Alan Mackin, hurled into the deepest of waters in Friday's singles against world No 1 Lleyton Hewitt and Mark Philippoussis, Taylor said: "They dealt well with the challenge and will have learned from the experience. But we have to be realistic. The hardest thing is that both Alex and Alan have a three-year spell when they need to get themselves to the top of the world game, and they are both going to take a lot of knocks along the way."

Though he had little other choice, Taylor deserves credit for pinning his colours to youth in selection for the singles. Of Bogdanovic, the 18-year-old who drew praise from Hewitt, the captain added: "I have seen him improve a lot since mid-November [after winning the National title] but he knows there is work to be done, and much of that has to come from the player. But there have been gains because both of them now have experience of live Davis Cup rubbers and I shall be looking for them to go to the next level."

That level seemed in the realm of dreams as the makeshift doubles pair, Maclagan and Parmar, lost the first five games and found themselves a set down after just 22 minutes. Maclagan had performed heroics in doubles with Henman against Thailand in the World Group play-off last September. But Parmar is not, by any stretch of the imagination, to be bracketed with Henman, while in the aggressively talented Hewitt and the vastly experienced Woodbridge Britain were a long way from tussles with Thais.

However, the British pair managed to settle to their task, benefiting from rather wayward tennis by Woodbridge, who seemed to be missing his long-time alter ego, Mark Woodforde, alongside him. While Hewitt hammered the ball in familiar fashion, Woodbridge committed enough errors to keep British spirits up. Possibly stimulated by the arrival in the Fanatics' midst of look-alikes of the Queen, Captain James Cook and Ned Kelly, the Australians went two sets up with an hour still not gone and the Brits showing little sign of possessing weapons of mass retaliation.

So it was surprising when Woodbridge was broken at the start of the third set, an achievement saluted by a lone trumpeter blaring the British national anthem. That break was swiftly clawed back but open astonishment greeted Hewitt's dropping of serve on a double fault to put Britain 4-3 up, a lead to which they clung to capture the third set and find themselves, in theory, back in with a chance.

That chance evaporated with Parmar's loss of serve which put Australia 4-2 up in the fourth set, with Hewitt needing constantly to fire his partner to greater effort and more accurate tennis. Woodbridge responded by shakily holding serve for a 5-2 lead before a succession of strokes of undiluted genius from Hewitt shattered Maclagan's service game and settled the match.

Maclagan bravely opined that he was "gutted", explaining: "At the end of the third set we were actually the better team." But already Hewitt was far down the road, plotting another Australian appearance in this year's final. If it happens it would be Australia's fourth in five years.

"We've a bloody good chance of winning it," Hewitt insisted. "We've lots of capable singles players and even if one gets injured we've a great chance." Next on their hit list is a quarter-final in April, either at home to Brazil or away to Sweden. For Britain, it will be the sombre involvement, for the sixth successive year, in the September play-offs to retain a place in the World Group.