The Ashes boot is truly on the other foot

Alastair Cook: Sure of where his off stump is, what his off stump is, and even what sport his off stump might be involved in
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Happy New Year, Confectionery Stallers, and welcome to the first ever edition of this crickoblog to have been composed when the words "England retained the Ashes by obliterating Australia with a phenomenal display of total cricket" could be written without being a rabidly deluded fantasy or a wilfully obscure cryptic crossword clue.

As I write, England, with Cook and Bell grinding the remaining slivers of spirit from the Australian bowling attack, are well placed to ensure their series victory, probably by 3-1 unless Australia's top order decide to stop batting as if they are trying to raise questions about their nation's right to Test status.

It has been one of England's greatest all-round performances, and almost certainly Australia's worst. Many predicted an England success. No-one predicted a drubbing. Albeit a drubbing that could still, theoretically, end 2-2, and one in which England's remorselessly determined and scientifically executed demolition of their opponents was punctuated by an oddly feeble capitulation in Perth. Strauss' men are on course to record England's biggest ever runs-per-wicket superiority in an Ashes series – so much for the too-close-to-call series almost everyone seemed to expect. This series has been the cricketing equivalent of turning up to see the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, only for one of the crews to be in a jet-propelled speedboat and the other to be in a leaking bath-tub.

Even fewer people than no-one predicted that Alistair Cook would score 750 runs in the series (and even that total may be horribly out of date by the time you read this). Of all the adjectives you could have used to describe Cook before this series, "undismissable" was some way down the list. Particularly if that list was being written by Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif. He has been phenomenally, bafflingly impressive – this is a player who had not averaged over 50 in a series against anyone other than Bangladesh or West Indies for over four years.

In six of those ten series, he averaged below 33. Cook turned up in Australia fresh from a domestic summer in which he breached the 30 barrier just once in ten innings, and then only with some major good fortune, and in which often looked unsure not just of where his off stump was, but unsure of what his off stump was, and even of what sport his off stump might be involved in. He then transformed into a slightly better version of Don Bradman. This constitutes one of the more remarkable individual triumphs in cricket history. Not quite as remarkable as Inzamam-ul-Haq winning the Olympic 100 metres would be, but remarkable nonetheless.