The trick is to turn it into a match-winning pressure package.Who will forget two breath-taking passages of Test cricket on the final day at The Oval: Lee in full cry, Kevin Pietersen on the ropes but saved by the “lunch bell”; after lunch Lee, with the psychological edge and striving for the knockout, timed at 96.7mph; the Pieter-sen counterattack, 33 runs bludgeoned in three increasingly erratic Lee overs; the Test match suddenly turned.That was a snapshot of Australia’s series: lucky-dip fast bowling, another no-ball worth a wicket, another dropped catch, blitz-hitting from England, a puzzled captain, pressure released, game over.Ponting was careless not to stop the game, to control his adrenalin-overdosed quick and, if the plan was to get Pietersen hooking, why did the captain have rookie Shaun Tait, the worst fielder in the team, in the “wicket position”? Lillee might ask: was that an oversight or a “committee” decision? Lee is nearly 29 and has been up for six years, yet we are still tapping our feet in Cricket Australia’s waiting room wondering when our new, focused attack leader will arrive. Thoughtful probing will reveal leadership shortcomings.The verdict on Ponting, coach John Buchanan and the selectors will be straightforward: complacency. From the earliest age Lee was always seriously fast, and in youth representative cricket in the mid-Nineties he showed the extra good sign of being annoyed by obstinate batsmen. Luckily, Lillee seeking his scalp reminds us that the key factor in this Ashes turnabout was fast bowling: the brilliance of England’s, the inadequacy of Australia’s. The inquest into Australia’s loss should go straight to fast bowling, Brett Lee in particular, and what is euphemistically known as “the red mist factor”. Then Pointing would face the sack, just as Bill Lawry did in 1970, or he’d resign, as Kim Hughes did in 1984 But forget any fanciful Warne fairytale. Vice-captain Adam Gilchrist would take over or a younger captain for the next generation would be appointed.Lillee forgets that when Ponting broke a thumb just a couple of months into his tenure and missed three Tests in India, Gilchrist led the team to two massive wins that clinched an historic series victory.

It’s just possible that momentous event may have impacted on Ponting’s Test captaincy development.According to Justin Langer, Ponting is “a mini Steve Waugh, he has got an outstanding cricket brain”. But in the Ashes loss, over and over again we saw Ponting in a powwow with senior citizen Warne, we saw a lot of arm-flapping from Warne, even some head-shaking. Was this captaincy by committee, or more a case of “too many chiefs”? Michael Vaughan looked much more the commander-in-chief.Ponting might be a Test veteran, starting at 21, but at 29 he is a young captain, in the job just 18 months. Lillee wants Shane Warne to toss the coin, just one mouth in a big cheer-squad that appreciates the legendary spinner’s on-field nous. On the other side of the rope are the directors of Cricket Australia, who remain nervous about the next off-field no-brainer Warne might deliver.

Ponting once practised biffo outside a Sydney nightclub and fancies a punt on the greyhounds, but provided that there’s not a quirky drug test or a phone chat with an Indian bookie in the offing, the directors will continue to back their judgement – unless this Ashes split decision were to become a flood of major losses.

You’ve got to hand it to old opening bowlers, the urge to commit mayhem runs deep. The irony is that in other eras Australian captains were only bounced by the enemy: Botham, Trueman and Co. Just about everybody presumed that there would be a few people there to mark England’s win, and a quarter of a million turned up. There’s nothing like the shock of losing the Ashes to unearth a few knife-throwers; Dennis Lillee has the Australian captain in his sights, and Terry Alderman thinks it would be ideal if five of the vanquished were to be pensioned off. He resumed smoking during the Trent Bridge run- chase and was still puffing away at The Oval He had stopped again by the middle of the week.

He was pretty pleased that he managed to pick the series result after Lord’s and reckoned England would win at Edgbaston. “If we’d lost, it could have gone pear-shaped and I was actually resigned to defeat and looking down the jobs-vacant columns.” Things have changed for Graveney as well.Test squad (probable): M P Vaughan (capt), M E Trescothick, A J Strauss, I R Bell, K P Pietersen, A Flintoff, G O Jones, A F Giles, M J Hoggard, S J Harmison, S P Jones, P D Collingwood, C T Tremlett, J M Anderson, M J Prior, G J Batty.One-day squad (probable): M P Vaughan (capt), M E Trescothick, A J Strauss, K P Pietersen, A Flintoff, P D Collingwood, G O Jones, A F Giles, D Gough, S J Harmison, S P Jones, O A Shah, J M Anderson, M J Prior.. Graveney deserves some praise and, for instance, pointed out that he had always backed Collingwood (“I recommended him right at the beginning, he can’t take the credit for that one”).But the Ashes series has taken its toll on the chairman of selectors. The suspicion is that Graveney and Fletcher tolerate one another as colleagues rather than exchange mutual invitations for Sunday tea. That has been so for at least two decades.So, the selectors were being asked to differentiate between the merits of Graeme Swann (29 wickets at 35.89 and one every 70 balls), Gareth Batty (32 at 35.90, strike-rate 69.7) and Richard Dawson (27 at 40.66, 72.3).The doosra bearing Alex Loudon was coming up on the outside. The off spinner with the best figures in the country is Shaun Udal (35 at 18.14, 36.9), uncapped at 36. Batty will doubtless be selected because otherwise it would betray the continuity on which the Graveney/ Fletcher empire is based.It is a reluctant pairing which recent events have ensured will continue for some time to come.

Projects are in place to alter this but what is needed is the boldness to allow them to bowl and pitches for them to bowl on. He has scored 659 runs this season in a Championship-contending side at an average of nearly 44. That is above Matt Prior (870 at 34.80) and James Foster (664 at 33.20).Prior’s wicketkeeping will certainly provoke the same debate as that of Geraint Jones and will probably be amplified. Foster might be the best bet, say close observers of the county scene Prior will probably earn the vote. Read was unfortunate to appear on television when he did but it has ended that particular argument for a while.If anything, the quality of spin bowlers in England is worse than the quality of wicketkeepers It is nothing of which to be proud.