Firstly, I am absolutely over the moon with regaining the Ashes!! Watching the celebrations and emotions from all the players and staff yesterday was brilliant, and I hope every English person enjoyed watching the series unfold.
Our victory in 2005 was seen as reaching the pinnacle, we'd enjoyed a good run of success leading upto the 05 Ashes, and the victory then was seen as topping it all off nicely, and that we had achieved our goal as a cricket team, which was clearly not how it panned out. Lessons should be learnt, and it is different this time around, we have achieved mixed results recently, and this series win is an ideal platform and should give all the younger guys the necessary confidence to believe we can now go on and get a victory in SA, which will be probably be an even tougher assignment than this one.
There was not much between these sides, simply that England ceased their opportunities far more ruthlessly. It's clear the certain stats favour Australia, but it's the important sessions that England won, and with the inexperience in the Aussie side the inability to play consistently well for long periods will not be there at this stage.
For England, it really is now a case of building on this, and I believe they can do. There will be a real competition for places now with KP returning, hopefully, for SA, Ravi Bopara will not be finished with Test cricket by any stretch, and Jon Trott has given himself the best chance of starting the SA series with his performances in the last Test.
With the bowling attack, having Graham Onions and Ryan Sidebottom sat on the sidelines shows we do have decent players to come in, but of course losing Andrew Flintoff is a huge blow, and while it is unlikely he will be replaced for quite some time (like for like, if ever) that does not mean to say we cannot continue with the momentum gained from this win.