A lot will be said about Australia's 5-0 "pinkwash" in the 2013-14 Ashes. Much will be made of the fact that England's batsmen failed. The series records of Pietersen, Cook and Bell brook no argument otherwise. But there is no symmetry between batting and bowling in Tests. While it is the case that batsmen can only bat as well as they are allowed to bat, it is not similarly the case that bowlers can bowl as well as they are allowed to bowl as bowlers get to begin each play.
It is one of the peculiar facts about cricket that the people who watch it for a living pay disproportionate attention to batsmen. Test teams rise and fall by the quality of their bowling attacks. A lot of attention will be paid to the records of Pietersen, Cook and Bell. Michael Carberry and Joe Root will attract a lot of close attention as well, mainly for mistakes they made in the small fraction of a second that it takes for one of Mitchell Johnson's thunderbolts to get to the batting end from his hand.
England's fate in the Ashes can be put down almost entirely to their bowling attack. Stuart Broad was the only England bowler who looked plausible. James Anderson did not trouble the Australians with any consistency. He didn't seem to find the right length for the pace which he was prepared to bowl at. It is difficult to say that this might have been due to the Kookaburra ball since Anderson did very well bowling with the very same ball in 2010-11. Graeme Swann was not threatening and seemed to be caught unawares by batsmen who used their feet on wickets which didn't offer square turn. He rarely threatened to take wickets. He didn't keep the runs down either, conceding nearly four runs per over.
As for their 4th bowler, England's management seemed to think it was more important that the 4th bowler be able to bat. They picked first Ben Stokes, then Tim Bresnan and finally Scott Borthwick (even though Monty Panesar was fit and available at Sydney).
This all round failure of the bowling attack (with the exception of Stuart Broad) meant that a decidedly modest Australian batting line up was able to produce first innings of 570/9 at Adelaide and then 385 at Perth - above par scores given the line up and the conditions.
If the series had to be summarized, the best way to do it would be to say that England's bowlers allowed Australia's batsmen too many opportunities to make easy runs, while Australia's bowlers, who miraculously stayed fit throughout the series, did not. England could have played patiently and tried to tire the three Australian pacemen out, but Harris, Siddle and in a different way, Johnson, outlasted them. Johnson's pace helped enormously in this, because it gave Australia a lethal trump card against England's lower order. Johnson was also a difficult bowler to start against.
Test Cricket is essentially a battle between rival bowling attacks. England's bowling attack was found utterly wanting, between the senior fast bowler who lost his zip, the reserve pacemen who couldn't apparently be risked in the Test team, the senior off spinner who couldn't even control the scoring, let alone take wickets, and the specialist left arm spinner who struggled to get a bowl even after being picked at one point. Perhaps nothing points to the weakness of England's bowling as clearly as the runs made by Australia's lower order. Haddin, Johnson, Siddle, Harris and Lyon made 903 runs at 36 between them in 35 visits to the crease.
England's batsmen will bear the brunt of the blame in this series. This will be a mistake because batsmen only bat as well as they are allowed to bat. The Australian bowlers combined brilliantly to give very little away to the batsmen. Peter Siddle and Ryan Harris conceded about 2.5 runs an over each.
It was not as though England's batsmen were playing reckless shots to be dismissed. They were forced into those errors, or more accurately, into seeking those risks because they were getting very little otherwise. Australia's batsmen on the other hand got plenty of balls to hit. Stuart Broad and Ben Stokes took wickets at about the same rate as Harris, but they conceded 8 and 13 runs more per wicket than Harris respectively. The core quality of Australia's three pacemen also created opportunities for Lyon to bowl from a position of strength. England could never put together a core bowling group of similar quality - something they achieved successfully in 2010-11 against an Australian line up that was arguably stronger than the current one.
Even if it was an all round failure, at the root of the all round failure is England's failure to field four wicket taking bowlers who could keep the pressure on Australia's batsmen. Much has been made of Brad Haddin's runs, and he did well indeed. But I would suggest that any batsman in reasonable form would have done just as well batting at Number 7 for Australia because England could never bowl pace with sustained quality.
England lost the Ashes in the only place where they could have won them - in the field. Not with the bat.