Matt Prior did not get his Christmas wish this year. No one, Prior told us after the Adelaide Test, wanted an Ashes win more than the England team – to the extent that it actually upset him, the suggestion that anyone else craved it more keenly. And now, here we are: an England dressing room full of young men in short-trousers, being told by a malign, judgmental Father Christmas, that they can't have the present they've been pining for, because they hadn't been good enough this year.
I imagine Santa in discussion with the three wise men, discussing what suitable alternative he could provide instead.
A spin-friendly wicket at Melbourne? A spine for their batting order? A new coach? And the wise men telling him, hold on Santa, you need to think bigger. You know what might help them through this? Hindsight.
In the spirit of the season, perhaps we can unwrap this gift together, and share a quick look back on England's year. For those of us who can't remember life before the Ashes, it's easy to forget that the team were in New Zealand in March, where they drew three Tests against a team that sat above only Bangladesh in the Test rankings.
Still, the Kiwis bowled them out for 167 in their first Test innings of the tour, and England avoided losing the series on the final day only by the skin of Monty Panesar's teeth.
As for that famous 3-0 Ashes win, it's safe to say that not since General Haig looked back on the Somme has a victorious campaign demanded such swift and eager reassessment. So what, precisely, did happen in that series?
An Australia team labelled one of the weakest ever to set off from their shores bowled England out for 215 on the first day of the series, and two No11s – Ashton Agar and James Pattinson – contrived between them to take Alistair Cook's men to the brink of defeat. After a better England performance at Lord's, Australia managed to declare twice against them at Old Trafford, where only the most wilfully blind would now deny that, at 37 for three, a stock England collapse was on the cards when the rains came. There was a well-matched game at Durham, where Australia, at 168 for 3 in the last innings and chasing 299, looked wellset.
And then there was an Oval Test that we like to think we were denied by bad light, when the scorecard reminds us that Australia had declared twice, the second time extremely sportingly.
The statistics themselves prove as unforgiving and unyielding as the cast of The Expendables. In the past 12 months, England have managed two scores above 400 – two – and in more than half of their innings they have scored less than 300. Other than Ian Bell, only one England player averaged above 40 with the bat in the summer Ashes series. Who was it? Chris Woakes, that's who. (Almost makes up for his bowling average: 96.)
They say the scoreboard doesn't lie, but it's no saint either. The very act of winning conned us all, spectators and players alike, into a confidence as unmerited as any seen in the early rounds of The X-Factor. England's team had retained the urn in 14 days and, even as they stood on that cold, wet balcony, sprinkled by the applause of a few die-hards in anoraks, they told themselves that they deserved it. That it didn't matter how they won, but that they won. That their class, as the saying goes, was permanent.
They told us, too. Alastair Cook made it clear: his team didn't listen to the criticism, weren't interested in negative comments. They didn't care if people didn't like their style, or Stuart Broad's attitude. They weren't rude about the opposition, but they rarely credited, or even mentioned them.
It's too obvious, I suppose, to point out the fatal flaw, the hamartia, that has led to England's downfall in Australia. It's the one at the epicentre of most Aristotelian tragedies: hubris. I'd never have had Shane Warne down as a Greek chorus, but he called it back in August, when he accused England players of being smug, and warned us all: "If you lose respect for the game and the opposition, cricket has a funny way of biting you on the backside."
Or, as Emily Bronte would have had it: "Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves." Who would have believed that thinking they were too good would ever have proved a problem for the England team?
