No grand defiance. No miracles. A profitable morning and just a single delivery into the afternoon was all it took for Australia's jolly swaggermen to round up the England strays down the batting order and secure the victory in the fourth Test and a two-one lead in the series.
Anything other than a win for England in the fifth Test next week and the Ashes will remain in Australian hands for two more years at least. That in itself is a tall order, because they have not beaten Australia at Trent Bridge since 1977, when a floppy-haired genius strangled the wicket of Greg Chappell and announced himself to the Test world.
After the final wicket had fallen yesterday and the souvenir stumps had been pulled from the ground, the same Ian Botham, commentator now and match adjudicator, inevitably, on this ground, conveyed his decision.
The award went not to Matthew Elliott, for his innings of 199 ("That's one less than 200," added Beefy helpfully), Ricky Ponting, or Paul Reiffel, who took half of England's second-innings wickets and had scored an unbeaten half-century on Sunday morning, but to the slender young Jason Gillespie who, in the first England innings, had produced the best innings bowling figures by an Australian at Headingley.
Gillespie is a shy man of few words, but those he has reveal a disarmingly personable character. "I'm off to have a few beers," he told television viewers, "in a very short space of time." Well, he earned them.
The margin of victory was an innings and 61 runs, and if there was any comfort to be drawn from the day it came with the last ball before lunch which England's last man Mike Smith, perched so far away from his leg stump it almost constituted intimacy with the square-leg umpire, flat-batted a boundary that gave him something tangible to take away from the game and which took England to 268, their highest score in the series since the heady times a million years ago when Nasser Hussain and Graham Thorpe ran riot at Edgbaston and put on 20 more than that on their own.
That was probably Smith's last act as an England player, for Robert Croft dangled his bat invitingly at Reiffel's post-prandial loosener, edged and Ian Healy completed the closing ceremony. Armed with the second new ball, Reiffel had taken four wickets for six runs in the space of 27 deliveries to finish, almost by stealth, with five for 49.
There were no more wickets for Glenn McGrath, whose hostility excised the two openers on Sunday afternoon, but Gillespie nicked a tail-ender for himself, and Shane Warne took the early and vital wicket of Hussain.
It was an overwhelming win and owed much to the quality of the Australian play. But England, as so often in the past, failed to take the chances presented to them. The second day, as both Mark Taylor and Mike Atherton recognise, held the key. England had done well to lose just three wickets on the first day and needed to consolidate. They failed, and then, having reduced Australia to 50 for four in reply, they did so again. Elliott and Ponting put the match out of reach, and after that it was merely a question of when, rather than if, Australia would win.
"It was a tale of missed opportunities," agreed Atherton. "As well as Australia played, the door was left half open but we failed to get through it."
The England selectors are certain to make some, if not several, changes. With Cork back and already beginning to fire for Derbyshire, Caddick seething at Somerset, Ramprakash exuding class for Middlesex, and a brace of Hollioakes champing at the bit, Alec Stewart, for example, Mark Butcher, Mark Ealham, Thorpe and the hapless Smith will all be aware of the axe being honed. Atherton, too, will be starting to consider his position, and although he has been appointed as captain for the entire summer, and has expressed a desire to take things on with the new English cricket structures, a loss in the next game might put pressure on him to move over.
