Ian Herbert: Our Ashes conquerors don’t look so all-powerful now

The Sir Vivian Richards Stadium (Getty Images)

My colleague Stephen Brenkley sagely observes the irony of England being in an inauspicious place as they draw a line on this wretched winter – Antigua’s infamous Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, where the ground was so shaky that a Test match was abandoned there five years ago.

But events in Port Elizabeth, 7,000 or so miles away in South Africa, provided the most vivid sense of where the national cricket team resides. If Australia had bulldozed the South Africans, too, England could ask for a sense of perspective.

But Hashim Amla’s century, Dale Steyn’s pace and a series-levelling win inside four days in the second Test provided a dismal commentary on England. The outcome of that series can tell us as much about us as its participants.