In the face of humiliation, Nasser Hussain offered no excuses, admitting that England had been outplayed for much of the match and that he had made an error when he asked Australia to bat after winning the toss. "The first day was diabolical," Hussain admitted. "I don't know if that was a case of first-day nerves - I know I felt a little bit nervous out there and I've played 70-odd games. After that we came back well on the second day and then again today we capitulated.

"It's obvious, blatantly obvious, that the decision I made to send Australia in to bat in the first Test was wrong. As England captain, I am paid to make decisions and I am big enough to admit that this one was a big mistake. I read the wicket wrong and the buck stops with me on that one. I just thought if there was anything in the wicket we needed our young bowlers to get something, but there wasn't anything in it."

But his criticism stopped there as he argued that being bowled out for 79 was not as bad as it might seem. "They've [Australia} just bowled out Pakistan for 50s and 60s. They're a finely tuned outfit at the moment. All we can do is work harder. If there's any fault in your game, anything at all, they'll exploit it. We've got to be wary of that and try to eradicate our faults."

Steve Waugh praised Australia's allround team effort before singling out Matthew Hayden, who took his match aggregate to exactly 300 runs with his second-innings hundred. "Matty is batting almost as well as anyone in the history of the game at the moment."

Hayden was understandably delighted with his own performance. "It was a pretty special Test match obviously, especially playing in front of my home crowd. It's wonderful that you can get an opportunity to represent your country and then to achieve a milestone like that is something special."

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