Best player, moment & back spasm – our Ashes awards

The biggest prize of the Ashes series has been claimed. Australia have won the urn. Again.

That does not mean there are no other winners and losers from England’s latest calamity down under.

This is tough on Travis Head and his three centuries, but this series was essentially decided in the first two Tests and Mitchell Starc was the match-winner in both of them.

With a combined 18 wickets in Perth and Brisbane, Starc was giving off Mitchell Johnson vibes and he threw in a 77 with the bat at the Gabba for good measure – performances made all the more impressive by the fact he was covering for the absences of Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood.

There is probably some English bias in this one. In a thoroughly miserable lap of Australia and with some ropey cricket played by both sides, the most memorable moment was Joe Root’s landmark century on the opening day of the second Test.

The day-night atmosphere amplified the theatre, the collective will of everyone who wanted Root to finally reach three figures in this country multiplied the tension.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the cause of Usman Khawaja’s back problems in Perth, or the criticism he subsequently received, there is no doubt his injury was crucial to the destination of the urn.

Australia had been looking for an opener for almost two years, unaware one was hiding in plain sight. Head’s promotion to replace Khawaja in the second innings in Perth was a big bang moment, one that Ben Stokes said left him “shellshocked”. England never recovered.

Remember before the series, when the respective captains were both battling injuries, and there was a feeling that who out of Cummins and Stokes spent most time on the field would have a big say in the outcome?

Stokes has played all five Tests and is another defeated England captain. Cummins played one and got his hands on the urn. That the Australia skipper even managed that was remarkable after he somehow condensed his rehab from a back problem from 14 weeks down to six in order to play in the third Test.

Shoaib Bashir started this series as England’s first-choice spinner and ends it with questions as to whether his Test career is over at the age of 22.

He has not been helped by conditions – Australia did not play a frontline spinner in three Tests – and the 15 wickets taken by spin in this series is the lowest in any Ashes series of at least four Tests.

There were suspicions in the first Test that all might not be well with Snicko and the technology had an all-time shocker on the first day of the third Test in Adelaide.

The human error that resulted in the reprieve of Alex Carey might not have come to light had Carey not been honest enough to admit he edged Josh Tongue. Carey got away with it on 72 and went on to make 106. It was later revealed the wrong microphone was used in the process of the review.

By the end of the Test, players on both sides seemed to have lost faith in Snicko. Starc was heard calling it “the worst technology ever”.

There was one final controversy on the final day of the series, involving Brydon Carse and Jake Weatherald.

The day before the first Test in Perth was a golden age for England fans. A level series and evidence the stand-in Australia captain was spending more time thinking about Monty Panesar than the Ashes.

In a bizarre news conference, Steve Smith went through a rehearsed answer to a pre-arranged question about Panesar’s appearance on Mastermind, all in response to Monty’s comments on the Sandpapergate scandal.

England were under the pump by the time they arrived in Brisbane, with local media looking for any excuse to hammer them. Pictures of Stokes, Jamie Smith and Mark Wood riding escooters without a helmet – punishable by a fine under Queensland law – were a gift.

What followed was a curious news conference, where one local journalist asked Stokes if he would apologise to the people of Queensland.

This Ashes will always be remembered as the Noosa series. For four days between the second and third Tests, the idyllic Queensland beach town became the centre of the cricketing world.

Pictures of England players on the beach, at the golf course and in the pub were beamed around the world, doing plenty for the profile of Noosa as a holiday destination. Little wonder the tourists had their holiday in the diary a year in advance.

For those with the festive cheer to spend Christmas Day in the bowels of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, home captain Smith made the revelation there would be 10mm of grass on the pitch for the Boxing Day Test.

A seam shootout was apparent, yet few would have predicted what transpired over the following two days. Thirty-six wickets in six sessions, a first England win in Australia for 15 years, howls of derision and a £5m cost to Cricket Australia.