Australia working on another illusion act

Captain Ponting himself, after a lean patch personally in 2004, stroked a majestic double hundred this week while Adam Gilchrist blasted another of those amazing carefree tons which had his skipper hailing him "a once in a lifetime" player. Damien Martyn has been batting like a god for a year and paceman Jason Gillespie remains world cricket's greatest support act.

Their dismantling of Pakistan in the same week that we were busy self-destructing in Cape Town all felt very ominous.

Of course, one real stinker of a Test in a year doesn't make England no-hopers. Only the Aussies don't have bad Tests - unless it's a dead rubber. Their victory in Sydney was their 11th in their last 14 Tests. Two were drawn and the one loss - by just 13 runs - was in India after they'd already won the series.

It is not a criticism of Vaughan's weary-looking bunch to suggest that, like every other team out there, they don't appear to quite possess the consistency or quality to match the Aussies. Nor the resourcefulness.

The world champions are beatable but, as Ponting noted this week, still have the uncanny knack of seemingly finding someone to deliver in a crisis. Take Martyn. Once written off as a dilettante, he's offered both match-winning and match-saving innings this past year. It's just they still look classy rather than gritty.

For all of England's progress, examine the teams man for man and ask which of Vaughan's crew would make the Australian team. You could make a case for Andrew Strauss over Matthew Hayden on current form but the big Queenslander's slump is only relative. He still scored 1,100 Test runs at an average of 43 last year. Justin Langer, nearly 1,500 runs in 2004, versus Marcus Trescothick is a different proposition.

At three, no contest too. This is a problem position for England in which Ponting often looks the best batsman in the world. In the middle order, currently, you'd take Martyn and the ever-improving Clarke over Vaughan and Graham Thorpe. True, Australia don't have an Andrew Flintoff but they have an even more fantastic all-rounder in Gilchrist, the wicketkeeper-batsman Geraint Jones would love to become. In his dreams.

And would you prefer an attack spearheaded by a spluttering Harmison and old reliable Matthew Hoggard to McGrath and Gillespie? As for Warne versus Ashley Giles, don't even go there.

The other thing is that one of the Australians can always be relied on to fire. In comparison, England's world-beaters - Harmison, Vaughan and Flintoff - have been plodding along unconvincingly in South Africa and the Ashes will most definitely not be coming home if the same remains true this summer.

Currently, the contrast between the two Ashes leaders alarms most.

There was a moment when Ponting was reduced to tears in the Nagpur dressing room, because of the mixed emotions of watching Australia win the India Test series while he was an injured bystander, that it appeared he might have lost confidence.

Both his captaincy and batting since have made a nonsense of this.

Like his predecessors, Ponting's first aim is always to destabilise the opposition skipper as Sourav Ganguly, Stephen Fleming and Inzamam-ul-Haq, who hardly got a run between them, have discovered. Vaughan, struggling desperately, will be mercilessly targeted.

All this is not meant to be unnecessarily negative, simply realistic. A rare old struggle against a South African side in the process of rebuilding will be nothing compared to trying to reclaim the Ashes from a team still feasting off Waugh's old dressing room motto: "Never Satisfied".

"This time, they do have a chance," said Warne of England this week.

As long as the Australians still persuade themselves this is true, the hopes of Vaughan's men this summer could remain as forlorn as ever.