The origins of two species

Cricket: When Charles Darwin visited Australia on the Beagle in 1836 and reeled from the abundance and variety of the fauna, he thought that "surely two distinct Creators must have been at work".

The same thought has been hard to stave off over the last six weeks: how else to explain how two teams can play brands of cricket so different in standard, consistency and tempo?

Yet in some respects, the test is still to come. With the retirements of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer, and with Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden in their twilights, it will be seen how good is Australian cricket, as distinct from a particular group of Australian cricketers.

Australia were favoured in this series by the dynamics of the Ashes cycle, which turns on a series every 1½ then 2½ years. What if it had been the other way round? Would Warne, McGrath and Langer have held on to revenge the indignities of 2005 had it meant waiting until 2007-2008? And what would the England team have looked like a year hence with Michael Vaughan and Simon Jones fit? The long part of the cycle leaves time for Australia and England to rise and fall before 2009.

Shane Warne was bullish in the aftermath of the fifth Test. There was a big gap between Australia and England: "That's not arrogance. That's just facts."

The big gap in the Australian team would be easily replaced: "It's a good feeling to be leaving the game in such good shape."

It is Warne's nature, however, to move easily between "facts" and "feelings". For the rest of us, the fact is nobody really knows how the next Australian XI will shape up, while the feeling is that these are not simply practitioners being replaced, but presences. Warne is not merely a once-in-a-lifetime player, but an embodiment of his country's intuitive, self-starting, self-propelling cricket culture. It was not only Warne's leg breaks that won the Adelaide Test, but his ability to galvanise a team, to persuade them, in the words of Australia's opening bowler Fred Spofforth at The Oval in 1882, that "this thing can be done".

Warne suggested English cricket should consider whether central contracts have gone too far; that young cricketers would benefit from playing alongside established Test players in county cricket. Good point, although he could make the same suggestion to his own masters. Australians have a healthy domestic first-class scene, but it is not quite the crucible of competition they would have you believe.

One of Australia's chief advantages in the Ashes rivalry, however, is the nature of their opponent. Andrew Flintoff proved himself again the grandmaster of understatement yesterday: it was "obviously not nice" to have lost 5-0, while captaincy "had its ups and downs". But he was right to observe that every member of his dressing-room will potentially be available for the Ashes of 2009. The question must be: is that really an advantage?

There has been a sense on this tour that England were glad enough to have won in 2005, and, er, that's it. A visiting journalist yesterday asked Flintoff: had expectations of his team been too high? It seemed a very English idea. When expectations and outcomes are a mismatch in Australian cricket, people try to improve the outcomes; in England, it seems, they lower expectations. Australian cricketers know their Darwin: when only the fittest survive, being second best is pointless. Guardian Service