Quotes of the Day

It still hurts. Even days after England wrenched cricket's oldest prize away from Australia, the pain remains raw. It's a kind of physical tightening in my chest, a crushing sense of loss. One of my favorite family stories concerns an uncle who took his phone off the hook for three days after his football (that's real football, Aussie Rules) team had lost a grand final. Many of my relatives shake their heads in disbelief or poke fun whenever the story is retold. But a few of us (mostly men, as it happens) sit in silent understanding. Grief this serious should never be mocked.

Australians have grown used to winning — especially our cricketers and especially against old enemy England. The very prize the two teams play for was born from Australian victory. In 1882, after England lost at London's Oval cricket ground, the scene of their triumph this week, an English supporter posted an obituary in a newspaper lamenting the death of "English cricket." Later, a group of Australian women are believed to have burned a bail — the small wooden peg that nestles atop the stumps — and presented the charred remains in an urn to England. The two countries have fought for "the Ashes" from that time on. Since 1989, when an Aussie team initially dismissed by the English press as the worst ever to leave Australia's shores beat England 4-0, the team from Down Under has dominated with a record eight series wins in a row.

Something changed this summer. From the first morning of the first Test the Englishmen came at us with newborn aggression, scrapping and fighting like, well, like Australians. For the first time in years, England had a streak of mongrel in them. My Pommie friends were encouraged, but cautious to the end. A decade-and-a-half of defeat has made pessimism their default setting.

Australians are sunnier, generally. We are prosperous, stable, puzzled why the rest of the world mostly ignores us as we live solid middle-class lives in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and frustrated that when we do make cnn it's for a story like the short-lived ban on the use of the word mate in Australia's federal parliament. That lingering sense that we might not matter makes our sporting triumphs all the more important. We are taught from birth that on the world's fields and in its swimming pools Australia is taken seriously. Consider this: in 1999 Australia won the cricket World Cup, the rugby World Cup, tennis' Davis Cup, and world titles in everything from hockey to netball. Even our teenage soccer players made it into the final of the under-17 world champs. Sure, we lost. To Brazil.

Which is why this week's defeat to England — to England! — is so galling. In our misery we claw at consolations: one of our best players missed two Tests after stepping on a ball and twisting his ankle and then developing a dodgy elbow; many of England's best players were coached by Aussies; Kevin Pietersen, the batsman who starred on the last day to cement English victory, is actually a South African import (with a haircut like a skunk's). But in our hearts we know these are just excuses, feeble schoolyard taunts that barely register over the cheers of English triumph. The agonizing truth is that England deserved to win.

The pain will fade eventually. I grew to love cricket in the 1980s when the Australian team was regularly beaten up by the mighty West Indies, pummeled by England and even bettered by — gulp — New Zealand. When Australia eventually clawed its way back to the top we used all that hurt and anguish as a steroid, channeling the pain into a record 16 test victories in a row. Under Steve Waugh, a captain who seemed to know pain even in victory, the team didn't want to just win games, it wanted to crush its opponents so they would never bother us again.

Over the past few years, though, I think we — players and fans alike — forgot the reasons we like to win so much. It had become automatic. Not one player in the current Australian team had ever lost an Ashes series to England until this week. So, thanks for the reminder, Flintoff, Vaughan & Co. You'll be glad to know that you've hurt us but that we'll soldier on. We're talking it through, analyzing where we went wrong, plotting our revenge. Losing, we have rediscovered, hurts. But as you Poms know better than most, the sweetest victories are those that follow defeat.

• SIMON ROBINSON
• Australia's loss of the Ashes to England shocked a nation used to sporting success