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Sydney, New South Wales
Well well. England, in a fashion that few of their supporters would have dared believe, retained the Ashes with a stunning 3-1 series win. Australia, in a way that their fans found increasingly awful to watch, suffered their worst Ashes defeat in just over 25 years.
Who deserves the plaudits, and who the brickbats? I'll start the debate, and then you pile in.

ENGLAND

Andrew Strauss - 9

If the series started in the worst possible fashion for Strauss - out in the first over of the first session of the first Test for a duck - it has ended at the opposite end of the spectrum, only the third English captain in history to win the Ashes both home and away. His batting was solid - an average in the low 40s is historically very good for an England opener in Australia - but it was his captaincy that was inspired. A model of calm and control in the field, he led his side with authority, imagination and class, bringing the
absolute best from almost every one of his players.

Alastair Cook -10

This is one mark that we'll surely all agree on. Arriving in Australia as a supposed weak link at the top of the chain, Cook left it as an indomitable run-machine, breaking records with such unhurried ease that it seems impossible he had an average over eight innings last summer of just 13. His 235 not out saved the game in Brisbane; his big centuries in Adelaide and Sydney set up historic English victories. Only Wally Hammond has scored more runs in a single Test series for his country, and that was in an era of timeless Tests. Man of the series.

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Sydney, New South Wales

Three innings victories. The highest total ever scored on Australian soil. A 3-1 series win that left Australia on their knees.

We all know the happy facts. But what were the key reasons behind England's remarkable Ashes triumph of 2010-11?

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Sydney, New South Wales

Not many parties start at 11.57 on a Friday morning and end without tears. This one will.

Knowing with certainty that England were going to wrap up the Ashes with their third crushing win of the series did not make the denouement one tiny bit less sweet. When Chris Tremlett's fast, bouncing delivery cannoned off the bottom edge of Michael Beer's bat and splattered his stumps, it was the cue for unprecedented at this august old sporting theatre.

Tremlett, a giant of a man, disappeared under a bouncing scrum of team-mates clutching souvenir stumps. All around the boundary, English supporters cavorted and sang. The batsman sighed, grimaced at his partner Steve Smith and turned for the pavilion.

They say you can't beat the feeling of sinking the first Beer of the day. Thousands of England fans are currently doing their best to prove that old theory wrong.

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Sydney, New South Wales

"The England cricket team cordially requests your presence at a special party, to be held at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 7 January 2011, in honour of their demolition of the once-great Australian cricket team. Drinks will be served, plenty of them. Dress code: beaming smiles."

Let the old doubts go. Worry no more. At some point on Friday, England will beat Australia by an innings for the third time in four Tests to win the Ashes in utterly dominant fashion. It might well get a little noisy.

It's easy to take moments like this for granted. So many records have been set it's hard to take them all in. Curmudgeons might tell you it's only happening because Australia are so poor; after the thrashings in Adelaide and Melbourne, you might even be feeling a touch blasé.

Don't. These are special times for all England cricket fans. They should be savoured and celebrated, the carping and caveats left for darker days.

Scores are being made that were thought impossible. Wickets are being taken at a pace that shouldn't make logical sense. that those of us lucky enough to witness are likely to be gushing about for years.

Four years ago at this ground, on the same day in the same month, to seal an Ashes capitulation that could not have been more brutal or absolute. They were a shambles, a rudderless ship broken on the rocks and pulled apart by gleeful wreckers.

Not this time. As the shadows from the old green-roofed Members' Pavilion stretched across the outfield on Wednesday evening, , their best players slumped in the home dressing-room and the entire ground awash with the celebratory songs of the travelling hordes.

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Sydney, New South Wales

In an eight-innings streak last summer, Alastair Cook scored 7, 23, 29, 8, 12, 17, 4 and 6. He averaged 13.

Here in Australia he has scored 67, 235, 148, 32, 13, 82 and 189 to average 127. In the process he has almost certainly secured England's first series win down under since he was crawling around in nappies.

, a lead of 208 over an Australian side that looks to be on its knees. Teams have come back from bigger deficits. This one won't.

As sporting transformations go, Cook's will take some beating. Back in August the only cricketing Don being mentioned in the same breath as Cook was , but his performances during these Ashes have been undeniably Bradmanesque.

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Sydney, New South Wales

The closer we get to the finishing line, the faster the heart beats.

Tuesday at the SCG was a nerve-jangler of the sort that only a tight Test can produce - see-sawing this way and that, the crowd baying and bawling, punches aimed and traded but the knockout blow never quite landing.

. It could have been a lot better. It could have been a lot worse. After three completely one-sided contests, we find ourselves in an old-fashioned ding-dong. It feels both thrilling and rather awful.

Barring some sort of meteorological mayhem - which you probably can't, bearing in mind the summer Australia has experienced so far - this match is likely to end in a result, which is imbuing every session and individual innings with the sort of series-deciding significance that sees nails chewed off and hair pulled out.

Who will emerge as the hero in this final act? Which is key plot development? Like the series itself, it is still up for grabs.

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Sydney, New South Wales

As the old guard fall and fail, Australia's young guns are being marched to the front and exposed to the English arsenal.

Few are escaping unscathed but some are proving more resolute under fire than others.
Here, on the first day at the SCG, the series in desperate need of saving, it was the turn of to be called to action.

There have been easier debuts. It was gloomy overhead, damp under foot, more than Sydney. There have been easier boots to fill than Ricky Ponting's, who was watching on from the home dressing room like the fading star who cannot tear himself from the stage.

Khawaja's fellow tyro Phillip Hughes had gone to the final ball before lunch, leaving his mate with an entire interval to fiddle with his napkin and push sandwiches anxiously around his plate. His parents sat motionless in the old green-roofed pavilion, 43,000 other spectators in this famous old ground hurrying back to their seats to see the new number three earn his stripes.

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Sydney, New South Wales

It's been a giddy few weeks out here during this Ashes series - innings victories, record-breaking partnerships, calamitous collapses and the urn retained by England for the first time in almost 25 years.

The thrills and spills have been wonderful, but at times it's been hard to keep the heroics in perspective. Which is why, this Sunday, I find myself in a small room at the Australia Club in the centre of Sydney, sitting opposite an avuncular 88-year-old Ashes legend by the name of .

If you don't know who Arthur is, you're going to enjoy meeting him. In five series against England, three of them victorious, he . Only three Australians have a better average against England. The principal among them, Don Bradman, was Arthur's best mate.

He was playing grade cricket against adults at the age of 12, and on his first-class debut aged 18 he scored centuries in both innings - the first man in history to do so. All of which makes it somewhat surprising to hear that in his first two Tests, when he scored just two and five, he was "scared as hell".

"It was quite something ," he says. "When I walked out, I thought, 'What the hell am I doing here?

"I think I've got an inferiority complex. It probably comes from growing up in the country where you think everyone in the city must be so superior in every way to us country fellas.

"I would smoke a cigarette before going out to bat. It was the thing to do in those days, from looking at the movies - the drama of it, standing on the balcony, drawing on a cigarette and saying, 'Ah, what shall I do today?'"

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Sydney, New South Wales

I've never believed in aliens. I stopped being scared of monsters at the age of six - OK, nine. But there is a bogeyman who has struck fear into me for most of my adult life, and he wears a baggy green cap.

Unrelenting destroyer of Ashes dreams, impervious to anything thrown at him, the Aussie cricketer was everything his English counterpart appeared not to be - hard-nosed, aggressive, indomitable under pressure. The names changed and the series went by, but the menace remained constant.

Until now.

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