Quotes of the Day

A memory as clear to Colin Croft as any of the 100-plus wickets he took as a West Indian speedster is a dressing-room visit in 1982 by the Australian captain. His side having just lost a Test match in Adelaide, the regal Greg Chappell strolled in with a message for his conquerors. "Gentleman, I'm going to be honest: you're better than us," Croft remembers Chappell saying. "But we are going to put plans in place so that, within 15 years, we're going to be not only world champions but world champions continuously." Though he'd later become a critic of player development programs based on technical coaching, Chappell's prediction was spot on. The start date of Australia's reign is a matter of debate, but it needn't be. When Mark Taylor's side trounced the West Indies in the Caribbean in 1995, the title of world's best fell to Australia, where—and this is also contentious—it remains today.

In case anyone missed it, after eight straight losses England regained the Ashes by beating Ricky Ponting's Australians in a riveting series last year. And just in case it needs saying, England deserved to win. In some ways the 2-1 result flattered Australia, who at times resembled a weary pug in the ring with a killer. But while succession works simply in boxing, in cricket it's more complicated. Generally, a country that has ruled for a long time won't abdicate on the basis of a single defeat. It will maintain the kingly mannerisms until it loses again. So it is with the Australians on the eve of the rematch, a five-Test series beginning in Brisbane on Nov. 23. Even for the crustier fans of both countries, an Ashes contest may never have been more tantalizing. Part of its allure is that it will put the preceding one in context. Was the 2005 result an aberration, a consequence of many things falling for England in a way that won't possibly happen again? Or was it the beginning of the end for an Australian dynasty now running on old legs and bravado?

Whether Australia wins or flounders this summer, it may be worth taking a lingering look at this team, to reflect on its star players in the knowledge that it could be decades before Australia again fields a force as potent as the sides of 1995 onward. Beating England won't change the fact that Ponting's most celebrated teammates are in the twilight of their careers. The question is not whether Australia are nearing a fall but how bad it will be. "We won't ever be poor, but we will be normal," says former vice-captain Ian Healy. "We'll have to play really tough cricket to win games and save games." When Australia lose their great bowlers Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, he adds, "opponents aren't going to be anywhere near as scared of playing Australia as they are now."

Rivals have had good reason to be intimidated. While historians consider the present run to be the fifth golden era of Australian cricket, there's been nothing to match it for duration or the number of exceptional players it's spawned. Over this period greatness (or something close to it) has come in pairs; it has arisen in those apparently untouched and been replicated as if by decree. The country had not one Waugh but two—Steve the hardhead, who carved out cricketing immortality from the granite of his temperament, and Mark the aesthete, whose fluid strokes caused ancients to scour their memory for another who made batting look so easy and so beautiful.

Inspired by his fellow batsmen, Justin Langer transformed from a grafter into an opener who scored as freely as his bludgeoning partner Matthew Hayden. When selectors ended Healy's Test career in 1999, Australians lost a record-breaking wicketkeeper who more than occasionally saved his side with his bat. His replacement, Adam Gilchrist, proved to be an improvement on greatness—an almost equally accomplished gloveman who became, if not his country's finest batsman, certainly its cleanest and most dashing hitter. Of all examples of Australian extravagance this past decade, none has been more demoralizing for opponents than the sight of Gilchrist marching to the crease at No. 7.

Of the top 10 Australian Test wicket-takers of all time, four have played in the period since the Caribbean triumph of 1995, with Brett Lee poised to join Warne, McGrath, Craig McDermott and Jason Gillespie on the list. At times, fans have been too spoiled to appreciate how good they've had it. Most Australians would choose Dennis Lillee/Jeff Thomson as the country's best postwar pace pairing. And for speed, menace and charisma, they were. But in tandem, Lillee and Thomson took 148 wickets; McGrath and Gillespie have 376. As the highest wicket-taker in Test history, Warne's clippings would fill a small library. But the man condemned by fate to be his understudy, Stuart MacGill, has the better strike rate (wickets per balls bowled). It's better than Lillee's and McGrath's, too. But most of the time selectors can't squeeze MacGill into the XI.

Then there's Australia's opulent batting talent. Of the top 10 all-time Australian run-scorers, seven have played post-1995, with the combined tally of the Waugh brothers, Ponting, Taylor, David Boon, Langer and Hayden nearing 60,000 runs. True, modern players' high representation on these lists is due partly to their tendency to play for longer than their predecessors did. Even so, no one questions the extraordinarily high caliber of recent Australian sides, which have recharged as well as dominated the Test scene. As he settled into international cricket in the early '90s, Warne discredited the prevailing view that the only way to rout batting line-ups was to bowl fast at them. With his growing mastery of what had been the dying art of leg-spin, he reminded us that batsmen could be killed softly with archaic weapons like flight, drift and spin. Compatriots of yesteryear wish he'd arrived sooner. "If we'd had Warne," says former Australian fast bowler Geoff Lawson, "we'd have held our own against the great West Indian sides of the '80s."

From the early 1990s, Australia's batsmen realized that many of the fast-scoring techniques used in one-day cricket could be applied to Tests, and as a group routinely began to amass 350-plus runs a day. Other countries copied them, to the point where the drawn match—the somnolent one, anyway, that blight on the game—has all but vanished. As Australia rose, then soared, so did the notion that Test teams should have a coach to complement the captain in finetuning their performance. Between 1986 and '96, Bob Simpson was crucial in taking Australia from the bottom of the pile to the top; his successors, especially incumbent John Buchanan, have been innovative in keeping them there.

And yet ... in England last year, Australia were humbled by the country to which they most hate losing and to whose cricketers they'd tended to give the least respect. The series was close, Australia nearly snatching victory in both the Tests they lost. Equally, however, a feeling pervaded large sections of the play that Australia were sliding—not out of form or luck, not struggling for confidence, but simply ill-equipped to withstand a youthful England brimming with talent, vim and ideas. As the favorites frayed, it was a time to ponder not just whether the reign was over but whether it would be a good thing for the game if it were.

The Australians' conduct since 1995 hasn't always been edifying. While no one should expect champion teams to behave like boy scouts, even for the realist there's been too much preciousness and belligerence. Especially under Waugh and Ponting, Australia have been as much a gang as a team, easy to fear and hard to love. All the time Waugh set about breaking opponents mentally, Ponting was an attentive student. They are as responsible as anyone for the expansion of the phony war—the tiresome tactical games played before and between matches. "Players these days talk too much," says Geoff Lawson. "There's a perception that you've got to match the Australians for talk, to try to dominate psychologically ... it's just rubbish. Just go out and play cricket, will you!"

When England's Andrew Flintoff broke away from celebrations to console Brett Lee in the aftermath of last year's thrilling Second Test at Edgbaston, his gesture spoke as eloquently about Australia's moral limitations as it did of his own decency. Had the roles been reversed, would any of Ponting's men have done the same? In exchanges unseen or forgotten, Australian players since 1995 may have performed comparable acts. But the fact that Flintoff's gesture received so much attention suggests cricket fans are more familiar with displays of Australian triumphalism.

On an overcast November morning, Craig Gill is watching the England players practice in the Sydney Cricket Ground nets. From Leeds but a Sydney resident since 1992, Gill will spend the summer as part of the Barmy Army, the relentlessly merry 30,000-strong force of traveling England supporters. There's a lot to like about the tourists' session. Despite a long layoff due to injury, Flintoff's bowling looks as lively as ever. Perfectly balanced over his bat, his work devoid of superfluous movement, Andrew Strauss looks impregnable against all comers. A sense of harmony prevails. But Gill sounds so pessimistic about England's chances that you could start to wonder why they don't just pack up for the day and go see a movie. Like many England supporters, he fears an Australian team hell-bent on revenge. If England show any weakness, Gill says, if they're not absolutely determined to hold on to what they've won, if there's any sense within the squad that the thrill of beating Australia last year will sustain them for the rest of their lives and that it would be greedy to hope to do it twice, "then it could be ugly for them." From the other side of the world, Colin Croft expects to see a thrashing. Galvanized by defeat, he says, "Australia are going to beat the English 4-nil, I figure. England are not even going to go close to winning a Test match."

The idea that defeat in England didn't say anything too troubling about the strength of Australian cricket is being propagated by virtually everyone associated with the home squad, from Ponting down. In post-mortems, the skipper has avoided the conclusion that England might now have better players than Australia does. Instead, he's argued that Australia simply had a poor series in which their discipline lapsed and their attitude was never quite right —fixable problems caused by a lack of concentration in practice. As for this series, "While our personnel might be similar," Ponting writes in his just-released Captain's Diary 2006, "I can assure you we are no longer the same team. We are better players because we have learnt there is no end to how far you can improve, provided you keep on working."

Stuart MacGill's take is that England in last year's series built to a peak that they probably won't be able to match. Flintoff and Simon Jones bowled the best they'd ever bowled, he says, while a new talent emerged in Kevin Pietersen, for whom the Australians weren't as ready as they will be this time. "There were a lot of things that contributed to their success, not the least of which was that they played better than us from time to time," says MacGill. "But I don't draw too much relevance from that series."

There are other grounds for Australian optimism. England surged into last year's series, dropping just two of their previous 20 Tests. Since regaining the Ashes they've been inconsistent, while Australia have demolished everything in their path. Australia's batting is stronger than it was for Michael Hussey's inclusion; England look weaker without the injured Simon Jones, opening batsman Marcus Trescothick (ill) and the leadership of Michael Vaughan (injured). Australia hardly ever lose at home—though occasionally they're held to a drawn series, which is all England need to keep the Ashes. "Australia have played poor matches since 1995, but never poor series until last year," says Lawson. "This particular group of players hasn't played that badly before or since, so I'm putting 2005 aside as an aberration."

But was it? Odd results often occur in helter-skelter one-day cricket, and even in a five-day Test the inferior side sometimes wins. But excluding weather interruptions, Ashes series are played over 25 six-hour days, long enough for class to tell and the cream to rise. It was apparent from the first morning of the First Test last year that England would be formidable. Australia had ample time to adjust their attitude, to crank up the intensity of their practices, to tinker with tactics and personnel. They did all of this and still lost.

And the main reason they lost was that England had the better fast bowlers. The worry for Australia is that even without Simon Jones, they still might. McGrath is a champion. He's also 36. Watching him running in to bowl revives memories of an Australian practice at the Sydney Cricket Ground in the late '90s, when two speedsters at opposite ends of their careers were operating in adjacent nets. Veteran Craig McDermott was bustling in as though he had a lead weight strapped to each thigh; a flowing Brett Lee, meanwhile, might have been mistaken for an Olympic sprinter. Though as cagey as ever, McGrath these days looks a lot like McDermott did. "You always think you have more to offer," Jeff Thomson said recently on the topic of McGrath and other ageing quicks. "Years after you retire you look back at footage of your last couple of years and think, What a heap of s___ I bowled then." Now Australia's No. 1 quick, Lee can be devastating in bursts but lacks the height, patience, accuracy and cunning to lead an attack the way McGrath has for a decade. After Lee, no one's sure who's next in line. When pace fails for Australia this summer, the skipper will turn to Warne, 37, to try to spin them out of trouble—again.

The darkest memory for many Australian cricket fans is the period during the mid-'80s when Australia, rocked by the simultaneous retirements of three all-time greats in Chappell, Lillee and Rod Marsh, could hardly beat time with a stick. The slump reminded local guardians that gradual renewal was the way to keep a team winning, and they undertook to do it. And up to a point, they have—Healy, Mark Waugh and Dean Jones were all let go with some juice still in the lemon. More recently, however, selectors' feelings of loyalty and gratitude toward fine servants have clouded their judgment.

There's no missing the graying of Ponting's team, dubbed "Dad's Army" by former England great Ian Botham. Selectors have persisted, for example, with opening batsmen Hayden, 35, and Langer, 36, even though the batting reserves are strong. "I think in the last few years the selectors have failed to make the hard calls," says Lawson, who believes Hayden shouldn't have been picked for the last Ashes tour, when he struggled until he notched a century in the last Test. But even that didn't impress Lawson. "It was a self-centered hundred," he says. "When his team needed quick runs, Hayden played for himself." Australia's conservatism would encourage England. "Australia have some great players, but even the greatest players get tapped on the shoulder by Father Time at some stage," Dennis Lillee wrote recently, to the team's annoyance. "It's worrying how Australia, after being outplayed in England, are going to turn things around with a decidedly older team."

Another question mark hangs over the captaincy of Ponting. With a winning percentage of 73, he's Australia's most successful skipper. Under him, Australia have lost only three of 30 Tests—it's just that two of those meant bidding adiós to the Ashes. Though the numbers don't suggest it, Ponting—at least at this stage of his tenure—isn't the leader Mark Taylor was. A statesman as well as a winner, Taylor had the edge in imagination: he knew when to desist with the orthodox and try the unexpected, and he stepped in when one of his bowlers was sending down rubbish, regardless of the bowler's name. Richie Benaud was the master of appearing assured even when the plane was in a nosedive, a knack Ponting rarely displayed in England. What's not in doubt is that his players want him as captain. "I know he has a lot to offer, and there's probably nobody else who could do it at the moment," says MacGill. "I think he's copped a lot of grief from a lot of observers when maybe he was just let down by some of his players. You can't blame a captain for bad form, and that's what lost the Ashes."

Whether it was bad form that lost them or something more permanent is what fans are waiting to find out. While almost no result would surprise, there's a lot pointing to a 2-2 finish, with one or two senior Australians to get the tap on the shoulder during a tense summer. For followers of Australian cricket it's a series to be savored, as an ode to the past, a cold-eyed appraisal of the present, and a glimpse into a challenging future.

• Daniel Williams
• They've ruled world cricket for a dozen years, but Australia may finally be losing their powers