CRICKET Ashes Test Series: When Allan Border's 1989 Australians returned home having recovered the Ashes in devastating fashion, they were driven through Sydney's central business district for an old-fashioned ticker-tape welcome.

They don't do ticker-tape any more, but if they did, the City of London would have been buried as the England teams - men and, let us not forget, women, who also enjoyed magnificent success against Australia - made their snail's way to stand and soak up the plaudits in the shadow of Nelson's column.

Victory. This has been beyond belief, celebrated not just by the die-hards who have been there through the thin years, but by those converted as the series gathered momentum. Some of the support from the chattering classes may even be permanent.

Today, Michael Vaughan's remarkable team, and the Ashes they have fought tooth and claw to regain, belong to England. The sentiment expressed on the celebratory T-shirts - still warm from the printers when handed round yesterday as the team began their champagne-popping all-nighter - was that of so many who never thought they would see the day: I Can Now Die Happy.

Emotion and adrenalin created at such times can lead inevitably to hyperbole. It had, in the eyes of many, become the finest of all series even as it was barely reaching its halfway point. But as the narrative unfolded it really has proved to be irresistible.

There is a danger, of course, of being parochial about it. Australians for example, aside from Ashes contests, will remember the series against Frank Worrell's West Indians of 1960-61 that began with a tie, fluctuated by the match, and, with everything coming down to the last day, finished with Slasher Mackay and a tail-ender, Johnny Martin, clinging on to sneak match and series by two wickets.

Those in India will recall the comeback against Steve Waugh's side in 2000-01 that unseated a side at its peak. Not since the second World War though, not even in Beefy's 1981 pomp, or when Bradman's 1948 Invincibles ruled, or Hutton regained the Ashes in 1953, has the game of cricket captured the public imagination as has this.

As the players enjoy the celebrity they have earned with their deeds, they will reflect that far from being the top of the ladder, this is just the bottom rung of the next one. The cricket world turns like any other, the order changes and we are in the process of witnessing a shift in the balance of power held for so long by superlative Australian sides led successively by Border, Mark Taylor, Waugh and now Ricky Ponting. Yet one bad series does not a bad side make.

The Australians returned home yesterday desperately disappointed, knowing the rebuilding must start. Old warriors will be thanked and moved on into legend. Yet, officially anyway, they remain the world's premier side and will do so for the foreseeable future. Not until England have been to Australia the winter after next and retained the Ashes can they be said, without fear of contradiction, to be the best.

England's triumph has been based on a team ethic that had as its genesis the moment the England and Wales Cricket Board agreed to the assertion from the coach Duncan Fletcher that central contracts were the way forward, allowing him the freedom to create Team England as an entity. The family that plays together stays together and these cricketers are brothers now to one another. Ashley Giles was in his cups during yesterday's celebrations, but there is more than just sentimentality when a tough man like him can declare genuine love for his team-mates.

There must be credit, too, for Nasser Hussain who, given resources denied to his predecessors Mike Atherton and Alec Stewart, began, with Fletcher, the task of instilling the idea that they could compete as a unit. All of the triumphs this summer had their roots in those in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, South Africa and the West Indies. It was here that they learned to turn adversity to their advantage. To come back from humiliation in the first Test at Lord's and win as they did at Edgbaston in the next match showed huge strength of character. Two years ago the prospect of turning such a situation on its head would have been preposterous.

"It's pure self-belief," Vaughan said yesterday. "It has to come from within."

Perhaps most surprising of all, though, has been the way England have been able to take on Australia at their own game, to stand toe to toe and slug it out. It flew in the face of perceived wisdom, which said these Australians, just as with the great West Indians, could be beaten only by attrition: by keeping them in the field, by bowling rigid defensive lines to clever field placements, and by ensuring that matches at least went to the last scheduled day, with the draw not precluded and a variable pitch probable.

Instead the response to Lord's was to score at a faster rate than seemed credible and to summon the most devastating pace attack any England captain can ever have had at his command. The Australians' early contempt turned to respect and once the game was played as equals anything was possible.

That Kevin Pietersen should snatch the series in such a manner, finalised perhaps with his blistering assault on the marvellous Brett Lee, was just the manifestation of all the confidence shown before.

And yet we should not lose sight of the fact England were within a whisker of losing at Edgbaston and Old Trafford and, perhaps, a catch away from doing so at The Oval. The Australians may be in decline, but the measure of their past achievements is there in the way they still competed so strongly with an England side playing out of its socks. They might have won at a canter.

For that, and the dignity with which they have conducted themselves throughout the summer, they deserve nothing but credit.

England's cricketers deserve their plaudits, but there is a way to go yet.

Guardian Service