England's Team Arrived Home.After Winning Ashes Series,Losing Odi Series 6-1

England's cricketers arrived back at Heathrow Airport, more than 100 days after their departure for Australia back in late October. In between their journeys through customs, the team found a perfect pitch around the 60-day mark of their tour, as the Ashes were sealed with a pair of thumping victories at Melbourne and Sydney, but thereafter it descended into tedium and acrimony, with Eoin Morgan's World Cup fate providing the perfect bum note on which to end a peculiar odyssey.
When Allan Border's men regained the Ashes after a four-year hiatus in 1989, they were treated to a tickertape parade through the streets of Sydney, and as for England's own exploits, the events of 2005 remain engrained on the retinas of fans of a certain age, with open-top buses and packed receptions in Trafalgar Square marking the end of a remarkable summer's contest.

Andrew Strauss was involved then, as he was now, but whereas 100,000 delirious fans had acclaimed the homecoming of the urn six years ago, this time England's emergence at Heathrow was greeted by a smattering of gawping spectators, and a solitary burst of applause from a man who might conceivably have been taking the mickey, given how listless the team has been during the 6-1 drubbing in the one-dayers.

It all felt distinctly unfair, to be honest. "I'm a little bit jaded because I've been on a plane for 24 hours," admitted Strauss, as he faced the media, dressed in his best bib and tucker and with (an oversized) replica urn from the Lord's gift shop perched on the table in front of him. Waxing about an event that culminated more than a month ago was hard enough in light of the travails that the team had encountered in the interim, but there was something rather absurd about the situation as well, given that the World Cup - of all immense contests - is looming quite so large, so soon.

"The nature of international cricket is you always move onto the next thing," said Strauss. "When we are old and grey we will sit down and look over the footage of that Ashes series, and we'll still be very proud of what we've achieved, and it will go down as one of the highlights, if not the highlight, of our careers. But now is the time to look forward to the World Cup, and if we were to complete the double of the Ashes and the World Cup in space of six months, that really would be the highlight of our careers."

Strauss was half right. Now, in fact, is the time to go into hiding for 72 hours, and suck up as much family time as possible before reconvening on the soulless Bath Road in Hounslow on Saturday, ahead of a ten-hour flight to Dhaka. Although the Prime Minister, David Cameron, had expressed a desire to greet the squad at 10 Downing Street, as Tony Blair had famously done in 2005, all such fripperies are completely off England's agenda. "I'm not going to go and knock on his door," joked Strauss, adding that the one person he would most definitely not be speaking to in the coming days is his sidekick, Andy Flower, with whom he has been in daily cahoots since the last week of October.

There are some positive aspects of England's current situation. With positive news about the other five injury concerns in the squad, Strauss believed that the chance for rest and recuperation would ensure that they return to action with extra motivation - particularly the frontline bowlers, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann and Tim Bresnan, whose understanding of their roles and ability to work in tandem had been integral to England's fortunes throughout their run of five ODI series wins in a row.