Most cricket theories have the life of a june bug; some persist, because the facts are fitted to them. The Ashes is a splendid environment in which to observe the latter. On Saturday night while waiting to be the token Aussie on BBC Wales, for instance, I listened to Geoff Boycott’s condemnation of England’s failures, harping on the population density of English ‘backroom staff’, which he numbered at 16. The only backroom staff Boycott ever needed, of course, was his grandmother, that formidable all-rounder beside which so many modern players pale by comparison. There followed a list of great players of the past who needed no such molly-coddling, Len Hutton being mentioned at least half a dozen times, only slightly less often than the speaker himself.

There’s a kernel of truth to Boycott’s complaint. What exactly was Mushtaq Ahmed doing in Cardiff? If Swann and Panesar could not work this pitch out for themselves, then they should not be playing first-class cricket, let alone a Test match. Yet was England ‘backroom staff’, especially Troy Cooley, not the reason so many smart analysts gave for the team’s 2005 triumph? A noteworthy omission from Boycott’s survey was any sense that Australia had played at all well – Ponting’s team were hardly mentioned. It was a long-held gripe of Steve Waugh that Australia’s long run of Ashes victories were always felt here to be an outcome of English failure rather than antipodean excellence. I hope critiques of the 2009 Ashes series don’t also slip into this pattern.

Ponting’s team certainly deserve better. They were excellent on the field, and pretty good off it too. The captain’s press conference after the game was a model. Despite the efforts of the bomb-throwing wing of the Australian press to incite him, he declined to inveigh against the late-innings incursions of England’s twelfth man and physiotherapist. What he actually said was: “I was unhappy with it, but it lasted a couple of minutes, and we got them off the ground. I don’t want to make that big a deal with it. I’m sure others will be taking it up with the England hierarchy, as they should. It’s not the reason we didn’t win. We’ve got to look at those reasons.” From the headlines, you’d think Ponting had had a Bill Woodfull moment. On the contrary, it was a straight answer to a straight question; no dissembling; no provocations.

He can feel well satisfied with his week’s work, and even his ration of fortune. England’s luck in this game was obvious: the toss, first innings, the injury to Lee. Australia’s came disguised: the injury to Lee led to the selection of Hilfenhaus; the absence of Watson left no doubt about North’s position, just as in Australia in 2006-7 when it expedited the return of Clarke. The one series he has completed successfully being Australia’s defeat in India last year, an incapacitated Watson seems almost to have become Ponting’s talisman. It’s a theory anyway – one Watson needs to disprove sooner rather than later.