Selectors must dig up a few diamonds

They say a week is a long time in politics. But will 15 months in Ashes cricket feel like anything more than a blink of the eye?

Right now it's hard to imagine that a year and a bit is going to make any difference because Australia underlined at The Oval that they are still streets ahead of England.

And yet, 15 months from now, another Ashes series will start and it is up to the challengers to come up with a few new answers.

I suppose England could hope that Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne have lost it a bit by then. Maybe Steve and Mark Waugh will be making their retirement plans. But I'm sure it would be a lot more satisfying for the Poms if they could close the gap by getting better - rather than as a result of any slipping in Australia's standards.

England clearly thought they would be more competitive this time after doing well in a few other series. Their bowling, though, seldom threatened to create real problems and that is the area which must be causing most concern.

Both Darren Gough and Andy Caddick looked tired to me. The longer the series went on the tougher it became for them but, with the exception of Alex Tudor's one performance at Trent Bridge, there was no help on hand.

Blokes like Dominic Cork and Craig White came and went without ever suggesting they would dent Australia's batting, never mind smash straight through it.

This lack of bowling talent is a real problem for England and somehow, from somewhere, your selectors must find one or two diamonds.

It was said, especially early on, that injuries to batsmen like Nasser Hussain, Graham Thorpe and Michael Vaughan wrecked the home team's chances. But would Thorpe and Vaughan have scored any more runs in the series than Mark Butcher and Mark Ramprakash? It's debatable, isn't it?

I think everyone was especially impressed with Butcher, who batted solidly most of the time and spectacularly in winning the Test at Headingley.

The key for him now, of course, is to build on this base and not slip back into the also-ran category. The same goes for Ramprakash.

If Butcher emerged as England's big bonus of the series then Australia's was Damien Martyn.

Don't forget, he came here as a spare batsmen and only got into the team for the first Test because Justin Langer had struggled during the warm-up games. But he looked a million dollars throughout.

It won't have been lost on England's selectors, who were forever chopping and changing their attack, that Australia fielded the same four bowlers throughout the series.

You don't need me to tell you that McGrath and Warne were brilliant. And I'm sure you could see that Jason Gillespie wasn't too far behind, even if he found wickets a little hard to come by in the last couple of Tests.

But, believe me, Brett Lee is a lot better than he showed on this trip.

Lee only got it right very occasionally over here. I'm sure he will have learnt a lot from the experience, however, and as far as I'm concerned he remains a fantastic prospect.

I predicted 3-0 and it finished 4-1 so I guess you could say I underestimated the weather, which wasn't too bad at all by English standards.

Yes, all in all you've made us Aussies feel quite at home!