Australia skipper Pat Cummins ended up accepting the two trophies he came to the UK to claim, but admitted that while his team’s tour ledger of three wins, two losses would be viewed as a success in retrospect, in the moment if fell marginally on the side of “disappointing”.
His England captaincy counterpart Ben Stokes departed the end-of-series presentation ceremony empty handed, but with the sound of an exultant nation ringing in his ears and the belief the campaign had been “everything I could have asked for minus getting the urn back”.
That pretty much summed up the slightly confusing contrast that settled upon The Oval in a rare burst of summer sunlight after England had squared the scoreline 2-2 by storming to a 49-run win over the Ashes holders late on day 25 of the scheduled 25 playing days.
By almost every metric, the…