If Cricket Australia was a failed Wall Street investment bank, then Ricky Ponting, Andrew Hilditch et al would probably be receiving huge bonuses right now. You know, the kind of performance-based bonuses that are paid out regardless of performance.

The selectors (are they still being called the NSP?) are spruiking the success of the Ashes series, which finished up Australia 1 England 2. Perhaps it would have been best for the NSPistas to exercise the right to remain silent. Andrew Hilditch: "As far as the selection processes are concerned, we had a really good Ashes, generally speaking". Jamie Cox, accepting that Nathan Hauritz should have played at The Oval: "Our Ashes, up until that one very well-defined moment, went very well for us."

I've seen no comment from Merv and Boonie. Let it stay that way. Their heads might be safer than those of the Test-Captain-who-never-was, AMJ Hilditch, and the Test-Opener-that-never-was, J Cox.

Ricky Ponting and Clive Lloyd are the only two captains to win two ICC World Cups. That's an enormous achievement to take into the annals of history. And, for the fifty-overs game, that's well and good. His performance at the Test game, however, is such that the time to resign or be resigned has arrived. For Ricky Ponting and Bill Murdoch are the only two Australian Test captains since 1890 to have lost the Ashes in England twice.

Ponting, as Australian captain, has presided over a drop from first place on the ICC rankings to fourth. The decline, and Ponting's captaincy, began well before the retirements of Hayden, Langer, Warne, McGrath and Gilchrist.

As well as being a double loser of the Ashes, Ponting lost a home series to South Africa last summer, and lost a series in India in 2008 after Australia had completed an unprecedented series win on India in 2004 (when Adam Gilchrist was captain while Ponting was injured).

Quite simply, Performance dictates dismissal. Ponting's performance as Test captain in recent years dictates that. The only real argument against Ponting's removal as captain would be the TINA factor - There Is No Alternative. However, there is an alternative, an able, intelligent, mature one by the name of Michael Clarke.

Ponting ranks alongside Greg Chappell as the best Australian batsmen in my lifetime. As long as he remains fit, there is no reason why Ponting cannot return to England for the 2013 Ashes and rack up fourteen or fifteen thousand runs in his Test career. But not as captain.

It's done. The 2009 Ashes series couldn't have swung around more if half its surface was plastered with vaseline. England are the winners, deservedly so, congratulations to them, and as a matter of disclosure I bet one euro before the series began on an England 2-1 victory at 9.00. More bloggage later today.

Wasn't it kind of the England team to forfeit the Fourth Test at the fall of the sixth wicket on Sunday and play a Twenty20 game instead. Nice, too, for the Australian bowlers to join in the fun.

It's not uncommon to have a late-order batting spree against the run of play when all is lost. The pressure has dropped away for both sides and the unorthodox takes over. That was definitely the case with Broad, Swann, Prior and Harmison at the end of the Headingley Test on Sunday. The madness of the moment shouldn't be used to denigrate Stuart Clark's vital first innings contribution to the winning of the Test for Australia.

Test cricket history is full of stories of late-order batting madness once a game is otherwise done and dusted. There has never been a case more insane than Nathan Astle's 222 as New Zealand went down to England at Christchurch in 2002.

But of course the most extraordinary batting explosion of all time in a losing cause was that by Sir Ian Botham and Graham Dilley in 1981. So much so that England went on to win.

Two last reflections from me on the final day of Australia's innings and 80 victory in the Fourth Test. One is that the symmetry between the fortunes of Stuart Clark and Mitchell Johnson is a sign that Australian cricket is in good shape. Of course, if they both fired at the same time it would be even better. The other is that Brad Haddin reminded us that he does not always play like a glorified backstop who can slog the ball when he bats.

Where does that leave the likely conclusion of the series? Just like 2005. Billy Bowden ceremonially removing the bails at The Oval to proclaim a draw. Different winner of the Ashes this time though.

'Tis deja vu till the fat lady sings.

Some views on the Fourth Test: Gideon Haigh (Business Spectator), Michael Henderson (The Telegraph UK), verse from Nick Whittock, undossiered bloggage from Justin Langer (cricket.com.au), and the following conspiracy theory:

"I still think the last test was a plot and Ahmadadinejad took the new ball, not Onions"

- Jonathan Agnew, Twitter, 10.8.09

T4D3 points for the Midwinter-Midwinter (and wouldn't a re-enactment of the great 1878 poaching scandal be a great idea before the start of play at The Oval?): Stuart Broad 2, Graeme Swann 1 in one-and-a-half sessions of play.

Michael Clarke and Paul Collingwood (8) share the lead going into the final Test, followed by Anderson, Flintoff, Hilfenhaus and North all on 6; Haddin, Ponting, Strauss on 4; Broad, Hauritz, Katich, Prior, Siddle on 3; Clark, Cook, Onions, Swann (sounds like a law firm at a gamefowl BBQ) on 2; Hussey, Johnson, Pietersen, Watson on 1. Nil pointes to Hughes, Manou, Bopara and Panesar.

England wins the toss. England bats first. England is all out for 102 in the 34th over. Australia wins by nine wickets with 27 overs to sp.... oh hang on, it's a Test.

Maybe we can call a compromise and get the Fourth Test over with inside two days, just like England and the West Indies did at the same ground nine years ago. Yes it's the traditional Australia versus England mismatch we know and love so well.

For now. Saturday, as Scarlett O'Hara would have said if she was a Sky Sports cricket analyst, is another day.

But if there was any measure in the gulf between the two teams on Friday, it could be summed up with the following rhetorical question: Whose omission from the first three Tests was more lamentable - Steve Harmison's or Stuart Clark's?

There's one question for which I can't supply an answer: What sort of warmups do umpires perform before the start of a game? Point in discussion, the very first ball of the Test.

Andrew Strauss, just twenty minutes on from winning the toss and choosing to bat first, faces the Terry Alderman of 2009, Ben Hilfenhaus. A huge banana-bending inswinger from Hilfy appears destined for fine leg, then nips straight and hits Strauss' pads plumb in front. The skipper clips his boot with his bat but otherwise makes no contact. Billy Bowden, in for his first match of the series, gives it not out.

Players do their warm-ups right up till the last minute (though in the case of Matthew Prior and Brad Haddin that's not always advisable). What do umpires do so that they are in a state of peak physical and mental alertness from the very start of play?

Competition for the rickeyre.com Ashes Best-on-Ground award for the 2009 series is hotting up. The Midwinter-Midwinter is named in honour of an Australian player from the early days of the Ashes and an England player from the early days of the Ashes - who happen to be the same person, but whose cricketing nationality was transformed in one of the most infamous poaching incidents in sporting history. Several strong individual efforts in an eventful Friday, but my Midwinter-Midwinter points for Headingley Day One are: Peter Siddle 3, Stuart Clark 2, Ricky Ponting 1.