As it happened: Fifth Test, day threeAussies pin hopes on second new ballClarke's captaincy proves crucial
So this most abstruse and paradoxical of Ashes series is set come to its only fitting end. England, after losing by an innings, some time on Sunday ought to be spraying champagne and shouting hoorays and clambering aboard an open-topped bus to parade around London and be presented with the keys to the city.
And Australia, after four days of all-conquering cricket at The Oval, will be scuffing the turf ruefully and smiling wanly and putting consoling arms around retired captain Michael Clarke and wondering again where it had all gone wrong. 
Barring the intrusion of weather, it will not simply be 3-2, but three thrashings to two thrashings. Every match has taken its own distinct course on day one and rattled along without let or hindrance to its own customised conclusion long before the end of day four. Only the third and fourth Tests were vaguely alike, and they proved to be the difference. The series will have been reckoned up in 18 days, the fewest in an Ashes series since 1884. Five of the lost or lopped days have been Saturdays or Sundays, which the ECB might conclude is a case of England doing their job too well for their own good. As when facing Mitch Johnson, if you blinked, you missed it.
Clarke enforced the follow-on for the first and last time in his career, and Australia sent England to stumps and an ECB-approved rain dance at 6/203. Five bowlers shared the duties and the spoils, and their secret was that the fourth and fifth, Peter Siddle and Mitch Marsh, were every bit as good as the first three. It meant that no bowler had to carry a load unduly, and every one came fresh to each new deployment.
Actually, there was a sixth. Minutes before stumps, Clarke threw the ball to Steve Smith. He will say it was for a change of rhythm, but it is just as likely that it was case of why not try pushing this button. Smith bowled two lollipoppy full tosses, then one that pitched, and Alastair Cook prodded it to short leg and so his five-and-a-half hours of sterling sentineling came to an untimely end, and Smith became the exception, to the exception, to the exception. Thenceforth, no force of nature could help England, only nature itself.
It was the 11th time in the match Australia had taken a wicket within seven balls of a bowling change. Partly, this was because Clarke made many changes, because he could, because he would. Australia knew England would not hand over their wickets on a platter in second innings as they had in the first, and so set about taking each one as its own project, in increments, staking it out, stalking it and when all was in readiness, striking.
Siddle bowled four maidens to Adam Lyth and took him in the fifth. Marsh worked over Ian Bell, Johnson did likewise to Joe Root. Lyon darted one at Jonny Bairstow and in the same over threw one up for Ben Stokes, and both were caught in close.
Only Cook stood outside this web. As in an old Monty Python sketch, and not for the first time against Australia, he was as immovable and imperturbable as a sofa at the wicket. Simply, it is impossible to play on the ego of a man who has none in his batsmanship. He cuts, plays three variations of leg glance and when he is feeling really self-indulgent, a cover drive. By these, he held Australia at bay.
Pre-match, Cook had urged his team not to nestle into its laurels. He didn't, but they did. In this series, he batted more than 19 hours, longer than Root, as long as Chris Rogers and almost as long as Smith. In a series mostly played on bowlers' terms, the hours have counted as much as the runs.
In the mind/body/heart game that is Test cricket, Australia also had to deal with unseen opponents: weather over the horizon, weariness after a day-and-a-half of bowling, anxiety about the follow-on judgement, the ticking of the countdown clock. They held their nerve and their shape and almost all their chances. In nearly all their endeavours in this match, they have been the uber-professional as they were not in the previous two Tests.
But for the most part, the Australians were subdued. For a team generally running amok, there were half-strength backslaps at the fall of a wicket, a handshake or two, a passing pat on the backside, but no more. Even at stumps, they were sheepish and downbeat. They could never be less than acutely aware that however much they slapped hands now, those hands would still be empty at match's end.
Unusually, these teams will go their separate ways now more confused about where they stand than when they began seven weeks ago. For England, it is a case of winning needing no explanation, which is just as well. For Australia, it is that losing has no alibi, which is more the pity.
Here's a stab: Australia were doubly complacent, at the start of the series and after the Lord's Test, and had lost the urn before they knew it, and only gathered themselves up again in all their endeavours, including selection, at The Oval. England played much the better cricket when it mattered, but as the younger team was still pouring gins and smoking cigars and winking at the girls when the fifth Test came around, all except Cook, who altogether would rather be batting. At least now we have some sensible one-day cricket to bring us all back to reality.
Oh, and about those keys to the city of London: England won in Cardiff, Birmingham and Nottingham, but Australia prevailed in the London Tests. Just saying.