HO hum. Just when we were hoping for a competitive Ashes summer at long last, here we go again. Just what can you say to all those poor souls in Wollongong and Wagga Wagga, other than: ``Chin up, sport. Just look upon this one as a learning curve, and better luck next time.''

If it starts going the same way as the Ryder Cup did before Great Britain expanded to Europe, perhaps some thought should be given to embracing an Australasian side, perhaps with a bit of Fiji and Polynesia thrown in. The sooner they scrap the Academy and start playing seven days a week, the sooner they might be able to give us a decent game.

There is another theory as to why this particular Australian side have lost their aura of invincibility. They are being sponsored, not by the usual brand of cold lager (It is said that David Boon once managed to down 53 of them on the flight over here, and was regarded as a bit of cissy for failing to go on to reach his century) but by Coca-Cola. The traditional use for Coke in Australia is for putting out the barbeque.

All tongue in cheek of course, but the imprint of Australia's boot has been on the posterior for so long that a brief gloat is just about permissible. And so too (with the usual cautionary note that winning the Texaco Trophy hardly qualifies as a blueprint for world domination) is an overdue feeling of optimism. As someone once said, in slightly less appropriate circumstances, ``We flippin' murdered 'em''.

If there is one clearly identifiable difference between the 1997 England model and the old banger of earlier vintages, it is that the selectors have finally embraced the concept of new blood in terms of a transfusion rather than a smear.

The key to a successful summer lies in getting rid of a well-earned inferiority complex and promoting players young enough not to fear failure, and not tainted by previous experience of it. Happily, this nettle has now been grasped with the elevation of the Hollioakes, and resisting (thus far) the traditional urge to return to the likes of Graeme Hick and Chris Lewis.

England now have a nucleus of players who can lift a dressing-room rather than depress it, such as Robert Croft, the Hollioakes, and Darren Gough. Australia's domination has less to do with a monopoly on talent as on competitors, and England have not had nearly enough of those in recent years.

Michael Atherton is certainly competitive - at times to the point of bloody-mindedness - and the inference that he was barely worth his place in an England one-day side would certainly have made Saturday's match-winning century all the more enjoyable.

He was first pigeonholed as too slow for the one-day stuff in Australia in 1990-91, when Micky Stewart, then team manager, tried his best to let him down gently after dropping him for a World Series match. ``Mike,'' he said, in one of the better examples of Mickyspeak, ``isn't on the best of terms with himself sort of batting wise, and on the tempo we're looking for in this particular game, we don't want him to force things outside his natural game.''

De-coded, this boiled down (I think) to ``we've dropped him for slow scoring'', and Atherton was not amused. It not only made him all the more determined to prove his worth in one-day cricket, but also to make sure he mastered the art of blunt speaking.

It was also on that 1990-91 tour that England's fielding reduced an entire Australian nation to helpless mirth and gave birth to an official fan club calling itself the Phil Tufnell Fielding Academy. The logo on the banner was a tortoise carrying a walking stick, but England's fielding in this series has been sharp enough to cut your finger on.

Even more pleasing from an England point of view is that the heat is now heavily on the Australian captain Mark Taylor. It was his predecessor, Allan Border, who once said, in that typically prim Australian way: ``If you win you're great, and if you lose you're an absolute arse.'' Taylor knows well enough that defeat in the first Test will plonk him firmly into the absolute arse category.

Whether Taylor survives this series remains to be seen, but for those who wonder whether the Texaco may just have seen the end of Phillip DeFreitas's in-and-out international career, don't bank on it. If Captain Oates had possessed DeFreitas's survival instincts, he wouldn't have been gone for some time at all. He would have popped outside his tent, and been back in 10 minutes with a plate of pickled herring and a duvet.