The shortest ever contest for the Ashes ended in feeble fashion at a minute past four on Saturday when Andy Caddick gifted Australia's winning run by overstepping the crease. Just one more to the 57 they have bowled so far in the series, but what a time to do it. If anyone was searching for a metaphor for England's inability to compete with Steve Waugh's formidable war machine, then this perhaps was it. They couldn't even give the contest a rousing conclusion.

Twice on Saturday, England had nursed hopes of winning the third Test. Despite the collapse to Shane Warne on the previous evening, they had a lead of 139. Add a further 60 to that, they will have told themselves - a couple of 20s and a brace of 10s, that's all - and on an unreliable pitch, Australia would be under real pressure. No Adam Gilchrist for England though, and no Jason Gillespie either.

Ian Ward was leg before to the fifth ball of the day and the rest subsided. England were 115 for two at one time and looking good before the last eight wickets fell for 47 runs.

Yet still they had hope. It might even have come to fruition had umpire Venkat raised his finger to give Matthew Hayden lbw to the second ball of the innings, when he looked as plumb as it is possible to be.

The spark died a little with that, but again at 88 for three there was the smidgen of a chance, enhanced when the Australian captain was stretchered from the field (to unsavoury cheers, it has to be said, not that it will have bothered him) with a calf muscle torn as he set off for a single from his first ball. He may have played his last match in England.

When the situation demanded a response, though, it came not from England but from Mark Waugh and Damien Martyn, who saw the Australian side home in riproaring fashion with the highest partnership of the match.

To retain the Ashes has taken Australia just 11 playing days, and that includes time lost for rain. It has been cricket in a hurry, and for all the great things over the past year, when it came to the pressure of playing against the very best, England could not hack it.

There were some sound reasons (not excuses, as John Buchanan would have it), not least the loss of an entire middle order to injury. In pure playing terms, England, said Mike Atherton afterwards, simply did not get enough runs in the series to compete, and no one can argue with that.

In all they have batted a total of just 347 overs for the loss of 60 wickets - that is one wicket roughly every 35 balls - never having lasted beyond the 66 overs they batted in the second innings at Lord's.

But they have also been outbowled by Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie - who with 17 wickets apiece have taken precisely the same number as all eight bowlers England have used this summer - and, on seamers' pitches, Warne who has 19.

He may not be the bowler he was, relying on the old faithful leg break and a scrambled thing that goes straight on rather than the mesmeric repetoire of yore, but he is still too good for England when the pressure from the other end is so relentless.

Six for 33 in the second innings of this game were his best figures since he bowled out Pakistan at the Gabba almost six years ago, and never in his career has he enjoyed better figures outside Australia.

Outfielded as they were in the first two matches as well, England's catching in this match was of the highest order.

Now will come the calls for change and they would be misguided. This is not the time, with a whitewash to be avoided. Unquestionably, though, the side which Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher created over an 18-month period was never going to have a shelf life beyond this summer.

Some players - Atherton, Alec Stewart, Darren Gough maybe and perhaps Hussain himself - are in the twilight of their careers and will need replacing. Atherton may even retire at the end of the summer, although it is to be hoped not. However, the first three conceivably could make themselves unavailable for the winter tour of India, forcing change. That too might be wrong: India will be desperately hard, more so probably than either of last winter's tours to the subcontinent, and England will need the best players then just as they will at Headingley and the Oval.