England must now try to win a consolation set

It only took a month. The 2001 Ashes started on 5 July and ended as a contest on 4 August. The action took 11 days, but that was thanks to rain and bad light. It actually occupied less than eight days: the three matches added up to 664.4 overs. Seventy years ago, a single Ashes Test took longer than that (Melbourne, 1929-30 -- 697.1 overs). This was not so much Test cricket as Kwik cricket.

The first day of the series at Edgbaston set the tone, with its 427 runs and 12 wickets, but that game turns out to have been the longest of the three: it took 237.2 overs, marginally longer than Lord's (233.5), and considerably longer than Trent Bridge (193.3). The clashes for the Ashes, as they are billed in Australia, have been more like thrashes and bashes. At this rate, Headingley will be all over on the Friday, just like last year, and The Oval could well be a one-dayer.

For England, the past month might as well have been a month of Sundays. Their only hope of matching these rampant Australians was to be at full strength. England's catalogue of injuries was not the difference between the sides, but it was the difference between a proper contest and a rout. If the injuries had gone the other way, it would have been close. How close, we may yet discover, as Steve Waugh is on crutches and Nasser Hussain is on the mend. All we need now is for Mark Waugh to break a finger, and Damien Martyn to go down with a calf strain, and Jason Gillespie to crack a bone in his left hand, and Shane Warne to have an Achilles operation, and Graham Thorpe and Michael Vaughan to make a full recovery, and these last two Tests could be quite even.

England certainly cannot blame it all on the sick list. It was not injury that made Alec Stewart select that loose forcing shot which so often gets him out played on before he has played himself in. It was not injury that made Mark Ramprakash set off on the most doomed dance down the track by an England batsman in a tight situation since Vaughan did the same thing -- largely unremarked -- to Muttiah Muralitharan in the climactic run-chase at Colombo in March. It was not injury that made Darren Gough blow as hot and cold as Caddick. It was not injury that made the selectors push Ian Ward and Craig White up the order to the pivotal positions of No 6 and No 7 when even armchair pundits could see that both were already out of their depth.

Injuries are not a blanket excuse but they are a factor, conspiring with others, as was graphically illustrated by England's second innings at Trent Bridge. Low-scoring matches are won by partnerships, and each team had managed only one of any substance in the first innings: 54 by Marcus Trescothick and Alec Stewart, 66 by Adam Gilchrist and Jason Gillespie. The game was therefore dead level as England went in to bat again.

In the next three hours, Mike Atherton constructed two more partnerships of the same order -- 57 with Trescothick, 56 with Ramprakash. Atherton's innings was a masterclass in living on your wits. Having spent a decade trying to make sure his thick edges go downwards (the Aussie slip cordon stands closer for him as a result), he deliberately slashed the ball over gully for two pressure-relieving fours. When Shane Warne came on, he adjusted his guard, taking leg stump to avoid being bowled round his legs as he had been at Lord's, and showed that he could read him by ignoring the ball drifting just past off stump. More than just a demonstration of the art of batting, it was a prime example of evolution in action.

Atherton was half-way to one of the all-time great Test hundreds when he played and missed at Warne for the first time and umpire Venkat thought he heard a nick. If England had still been the team that played in Sri Lanka, this would not have been the end of the world. Atherton's highest score in the two victories there was 21, and his role as linchpin passed to Thorpe, with help from Hussain, who made a hundred at Kandy, and White, who showed that he was a perfectly decent No 7 when the ball is turning into him. At Trent Bridge, with Thorpe and Hussain injured and White nullified, England were back to the bad old days of Atherton out, all out.

Not all was doom and gloom, however. After Lord's, England's most pressing aim was to get back on the arc of improvement that had been Hussain and Duncan Fletcher's theme for two years. In this Test, they did improve. Alex Tudor brought the third cutting edge that the bowling had desperately lacked. The catching was as good as Australia's. Atherton's captaincy shook off the rust it had shown at Lord's. If this series was a game of tennis, the score would have been 6-0, 6-2, 7-5. Now England need to build on that and win a consolation set. Steve Waugh's injury will help: the best man to replace him, Warne, is likely to be overlooked for image reasons in favour of Gilchrist, who is a wonderful cricketer but no more able to do three jobs than anyone else in Test history – the one time he captained Australia in a Test, against West Indies at Adelaide in 1998-99, he made nine off 33 balls, which is like an ordinary player making nine off 133 balls.

Hussain's return will make a difference. He will be in no sort of rhythm, but he will hang around longer than Ward, he will lift the outfielding, and his captaincy will give England the edge in one department of the game. Who knows? He might even get through a Test without breaking a bone.

Tim de Lisle is editor of Wisden.com