England outplay Australia in all departments

---

The English team celebrates winning the Ashes series after they beat Australia in the fifth Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground January 7, 2011.
Photograph by: TIM WIMBORNE
Credit: REUTERS

They possessed the best batsman in Alastair Cook, the most successful bowler in James Anderson and a management team of head coach Andy Flower and captain Andrew Strauss who scarcely put a foot wrong.

England outplayed a team who have dominated world cricket for the past 15 years in all departments of the game.

Strauss joins Len Hutton as the only English captains to win an Ashes series home and away against a full-strength Australian side in a five-match series.

Five months ago Cook was playing for his Test place. Now the former choirboy with the streak of steel and insatiable hunger for runs occupies a place in the record books alongside the giants of the game.

He scored 235 not out in Brisbane to save a match Australia had dominated, 148 in Adelaide to set up an England victory, and 189 in Sydney to extinguish the home side’s last faint hopes of levelling the series.

Cook batted more than 36 hours, longer than anybody in a five-match series, and his Ashes series aggregate of 766 is second only to the great Wally Hammond’s 905 in 1928-29.

Still only 26, Cook could break every Test scoring record in the English game.

LEADER OF THE PACK

England’s commitment to a four-man attack in the absence of an all-rounder of sufficient Test class since Andrew Flintoff’s injury-enforced retirement placed James Anderson squarely under the spotlight.

Anderson graduated to the role of senior England pace bowler with his ability to bend the ball late both ways at a lively pace. Doubts, though, remained over his temperament and ability to find an alternative strategy if the ball was not swinging.

The unassuming Lancastrian delivered with 24 wickets, including some brilliant spells in which the batsmen were not good enough to get an edge.

When the ball stopped swinging he adjusted his length, and his accuracy was such that the batsmen were never able to wrest control. He also looked the part of a strike bowler.

“Body language is a huge thing,” Anderson said. “I try to keep my shoulders back now and to be positive. In the past I’ve been pretty average at that.”