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It's a sad day when the comments tally at the bottom of this blog looks healthier than an England scorecard. Alas, that is what has happened over the past few days at Headingley. What Ravi Bopara would give right now for the quick-fire half-century of "The end of Australian books," or even the brief cameo of "The Intellectual Health of the Nation"?

The Australian papers have had three days to compose their headlines - the game was effectively lost, of course, by lunchtime on Friday in Leeds - but they are workmanlike rather than inspirational. Superlative headlines, I guess, are usually heat-of-the-moment rather than slow-cooked affairs. "Ashes to Ashes: England's Hopes in Tatters," says the Sydney Morning Herald. says The Australian. "Pure Joy," says the Melbourne Sun Herald, featuring a picture of Ponting playing with his baby daughter. Sydney's tabloid The Daily Telegraph is arguably the best: "Pommelling: Australia Humiliate Old Enemy."

Were there an off-field Ashes for headline writers, surely the urn would not travel far from Fleet Street. "Bop of the Flops" is The Sun's take on Ravi Bopara's dismal performance. "Strauss Hits the Boos," accompanies the story on the England captain being heckled by the Headingley crowd.

The English headlines also point to a statement of the obvious - that there's much more passion surrounding the Ashes in Britain than in Australia, where Ashes have not really caught fire. Day/night might ultimately be the way forward for Test cricket, but night/night cricket can be a rather sleepy and somnolent affair.

So just as Australia did not suffer any great national convulsion when it lost at Lord's, I have yet to witness any exuberant national celebrations following the team's lop-sided victory in Leeds. No one is flicking through the yellow pages to find the number of an open-deck bus operator, nor shredding spools of green and gold ticker tape in anticipation of a victory parade through the canyons of Sydney's central business district.

At a barbeque over the weekend, I expected to be roasted by some Aussie mates over England's monumental batting collapse the night before. But few had even stayed up to watch it, and happily the sausage count ended up being higher than the sledge count.

With the rugby and Aussie Rules seasons soon to reach their climax, the winter sports continue to take precedence over the cricket. I'm still a bit gob-smacked that the ABC has not sent it own commentary team over to Britain (nor has Aussie television), and is relying on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s Test Match Special (augmented with ABC's chief cricket commentator, Jim Maxwell). But if you had tuned in on Friday night expecting to hear Aggers, Blowers and Tuffers, you would have ended up listening the rugby league or the AFL commentary instead.

No doubt fans in Australia would have paid more attention if the quality of the cricket had been higher. Certainly, I reckon most Aussies would have preferred to watch an England side which contained Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff, and thus struggled to achieve a win, rather than watching an injury-weakened side which produced a lop-sided victory. By the same token, I reckon England fans would have enjoyed Shane Warne more than Nathan Hauritz, even if it reduced the chances of winning.

There was in the British papers over the weekend by the former England cricketer, Ed Smith, talking about English cricket's "cultural cringe" - "that everything Australian should be copied. First sledging, now booing: they do it to us, so let's do it to them. The English seem only to copy the worst characteristics of the New World, as Auberon Waugh argued, while never emulating its optimism and enthusiasm."

Interesting argument, and one of Ed Smith's reference points is the Melbourne Cricket Ground's infamous Bay 13. But I reckon the loutishness and boorishness of Aussie cricket fans is commonly exaggerated. True, there's no shortage of sledgers, and Australia's most famous barracker, Yabba, has recently been memorialised in bronze in the new stand at the Sydney Cricket Ground. But boos are directed at the security guards who confiscate the beach balls, rather than visiting players. So heavy is the policing these days at the MCG that Bay 13 - there are actually four Bay 13s in the various tiers of the newly-developed stands - is no longer the den of hostility of days of old.

For what it's worth, my abiding cricketing memory of the southern summer was watching the crowd at the SCG as it gave the South African captain, Graeme Smith, a standing ovation for coming out to bat with a broken hand in a valiant effort to save the Third Test.

As for the MCG, instead of constantly citing Bay 13, perhaps it is time to step outside to peruse the bronze statues that encircle that great sporting cathedral. There's Lillee at his terrfiying best and Bradman with his bat aloft. But there's also a statue depicting the moment in 1956 when the middle-distance runner John Landy stopped mid-race to check on Ron Clarke, who had been tripped by another runner, and then helped him to his feet. Is that not the true representation of Australian sport?

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