CRICKET/Ashes Series: This is it then. The hype is done, Glenn McGrath has blethered his last soundbite, the talk stops now. Only the deed remains.

One Australian cricketer, his mind perhaps scrambled by too many Andy Flintoff bouncers, has likened this summer's tumultuous series to Muhammad Ali's rope-a-dope rumble in the jungle. But if that is the way it must be, then bring it on. Seconds out, fifth and final round.

No other Test series in living memory has captured the imagination as this one, not even that in 1981 when the deeds of Ian Botham brought the Ashes home.

Australia were a good side then but not the best. This summer has seen a meeting at the crossroads between a supreme team on the way out of town and a vibrant young one on the way in, and people have been entranced not only by the competition itself and its closeness but by the manner in which it has conducted as a counterpoint to so much that is odious about modern sport.

Cricket has become the subject of the moment among the chattering classes. Those who have never given the game house room are instant experts. One fellow who spoke to me on Tuesday had not so much glanced at cricket in 30 years, he said, and thought the Australians had a champion player called Sean Wayne, but he went on to say what a pity it was about the injury to Simon Jones.

If the juddering halt of the internet-poker juggernaut brings a cautionary note to what might merely be this season's bandwagon, then to those who have watched cricket belittled over the years it still brings a sense of pleasant disbelief.

It is not only a parochial event, though. In India, where the game is revered for itself and the Australians are hugely marketed, television audiences have been vast. So, too, the interest across the Caribbean where the game that once gave the region an identity is said to be dying on its feet. South Africans are watching spell-bound, a reflection, from a country that tends to support its own and leave it at that, of the pulling power of the two protagonists now.

From Australia comes the gratifying news that SBS - the minority television channel more used to screening foreign-language films that bought the rights to the series after the big boys had turned up their noses - is getting huge reward for its perspicacity. The radio listening figures are astounding, not least from the truly global reach that the internet brings.

Today, 23,000 people will pack into The Oval, and the same on each ensuing day. Even the fifth day, normally a marketing graveyard kept aside for discounted walk-ups at the turnstiles - People's Monday - has been presold, a response to the final day of the third Test at Old Trafford where the ground was full by nine o'clock and 20,000 people were turned away as the Manchester public transport system was brought to its knees. People want to say they were there.

What they want to see, of course, is Michael Vaughan lifting in triumph the replica of the Ashes urn, the pathetic little eggcup, an event that would transcend the early-summer predictions of even the most blinkered optimist with any sense of reality. Then, it was felt, England would be capable of a more considerable showing than in the past 16 years, when they had been overwhelmed by Australian skill, belief and sheer presence.

Instead, Ricky Ponting and his side have discovered opposition which, largely unencumbered by the memories of previous unsuccessful campaigns, has viewed the Great Ones in the manner of the little boy and Emperor's new clothes. The aura was pierced, and an England side used to extricating themselves from scrapes have come out on top.

If the series has remained tight despite Australia playing below their capacity and England out of their socks, it is more a tribute to the way the Australians once were. England may aspire to match their standards but, without a genius such as Shane Warne, can never reach them. Australia, it is fair to say, may never do so again either.

Certainly Vaughan and his side will not be daunted by the level of expectation heaped on them. Thus far this summer they have met each challenge with spirit and are thriving on the pressure.

In 1985, when England last needed to win the final match to regain the Ashes, they did so by an innings and it is a lesson to be learned. Australia may come back in the sort of guise in which they began the series. But there again, they may have given all they had got to give. Perhaps it is England who have been roping the dope.

Guardian Service