Cricket's Coming 'Home'...Briefly

This morning -- well, afternoon; it's all relative, hemispherically speaking -- Team England crawled over the finish line, two days into the fourth month of a tour of Australia that has seen, for all the hype surrounding the Test series, mixed results.

Tour matches

Opponents: Western Australia, South Australia, Australia A, Victoria, Prime Minister's XI

England's Record: 3-0; W (6 wickets), D, W (10 wickets), D, W (7 wickets, D/L)

Verdict: An undeniable English success. Three comfortable wins, and two draws in which England lost only 20 wickets in four innings, and outscored their opponents 1305-857.

Tests

Record: 3-1; D, W (inn + 71r), L (267r), W (inn + 157r), W (inn + 83r)

Verdict: Another England victory. Unlike last time, this was fully deserved: the century count, a bone of contention among Aussie pundits in 2009, was England 9, Australia 3. Wickets taken was another battle won by the English: they took 91, bowling the Aussies out on every occasion except the 2nd innings in Brisbane; Australia managed only 56, bowling England out 5 times.

T20s

Record: 1-1; W (1 wicket, last ball), L (4 runs)

Verdict: Not so much a contest in which the teams won a game each, as one in which the scores were level after each failed to win one. Australia probably edge it, with two 50-plus scores (Watson and Finch) to England's one plus-40 (Morgan).

ODIs

Record: 1-6; LLLWLLL

Verdict: Hmmm.

So there you have it: a tour in which England dominated the longer format with an ease that was at times embarrassing, but that saw a resurgence from Australia in the shorter forms of the game. And with a World Cup imminent, England's shortcomings on the one-day field are likely to obliterate any residual feelings of euphoria over a third Ashes win this century.