Question: How did England manage to win the Ashes in 2005? Answer: A combination of more swing than Glenn Miller and more pride than the annual gay and lesbian parade.

Fast forward four years (taking the toll road past the drubbing Down Under along the way) and we get a few pointers from the first Test as to how the series might develop.

There was swing all right, in the shape of Kevin Pietersen's bat swathing through the coaching manual as he embarked on a classic Japanese cricketing shot (hara kiri).

And on Sunday at 18.42 there was enormous pride as unlikely heroes James Anderson and Monty Panesar pulled off the kind of jail escape regularly featured on cable television programmes at 3am (yes, I know I am one sad old git).

That Ricky Ponting's bowlers could not prise out a couple of batting bunnies in 11 overs is one thing, but for the crowd and England balcony to be celebrating as if the funeral director had actually handed over the urn is another.

In five days, England won one session (day one, after lunch), drew two (day one, before lunch; day two, before lunch) and lost every other in a display of lousy shot selection, rank bowling and captaincy which, had Andrew Strauss been looking for a seafaring job around Southampton at the turn of the last century, he would have been shortlisted for the Titanic job.