Tim Paine achieves what Ponting and Clarke couldn’t

Tim Paine, almost an accidental captain, secured an Ashes ­series where four teams before him, full of champions, failed.

As the last wicket falls, Australian players celebrate victory in the fourth Test at Old Trafford, a win that ensured they retained the Ashes. Picture: Getty Images

In the aftermath of the Cape Town ball-tampering scandal early last year, Tim Paine and Steve Smith farewelled each other with an emotional embrace in the foyer of a South African hotel. Eighteen months later, there were tears again in Manchester as the enormity of what they had achieved at Old Trafford swept through the group.

Paine, almost an accidental captain, had secured an Ashes ­series where four teams before him, those led by Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke, teams full of champions, failed.

Smith, on return from a 12-month ban for his part in the scandal, has been enormous, relentless, selfless. He has shaken off psychological and physical blows and emerged even better than he was before. He made a double century in the first innings at Old Trafford and threw away the opportunity to get a hundred in the second ­because the game needed to be moved on.

Joe Root nominated Smith as the difference between the two sides. Both teams have strong bowling line-ups, but England ­appear to have neglected their long-format batting through their obsessive desire to win the home World Cup. Australia’s focus has been broader, their plans and planning better.

And Australia had Smith. Nothing could be more important than that. But the bowlers, Smith’s replacement Tim Paine and cameos from Marnus Labuschagne — a man who wouldn’t be playing if there had not been vacancies due to the bans and concussion — were also critical.

Labuschagne’s dismissal of Jack Leach might look like an entry in the sundries column, a moment of desperation that comes off as the evening is closing, but it was more than that.

“Even from when I captained him in Dubai he has been working on his legspin bowling,” Paine said later. “He came on the trip and bowled a lot in the nets and we said: ‘He can bowl’. He has bowled a lot of overs in county cricket for Glamorgan, which has helped him. He is improving all the time.

“He is one of those cricketers if you tell a youngish part-time leg-spinner to warm up at that part of a Test match I don’t think too many would want to bowl. Marnus wanted to bowl. He wants to bat in the games when the best bowlers are on and even in the field he wants to make a difference all the time. His energy is great and he’s a really exciting cricketer for us and someone we can build our team around in the future.”

Labuschagne and Smith have both missed three batting innings in the series, but are the highest runscorers for their team. Smith’s 671 runs are almost twice as many as anybody else in the series. ­Labuschagne’s 291 at an average of almost 60 would not usually be so overshadowed.

Two bowlers have stood head and shoulders above the pack. Pat Cummins, injured for six years, has proved to be both resilient and brilliant. Smith is the best batsman in the world, Cummins the best bowler. He has a series-high 24 wickets at 17.41, he extinguished England’s top order in the second innings at Headingley and he is the only seamer in the team to play all four Tests.

His dismissal of Root was ­poetry — or porn. Choose your poison.

Ignored for the first match at Edgbaston, Josh Hazlewood has ensured he is not going anywhere since playing the second.

Nathan Lyon, whose impact on the Old Trafford Test was limited by a split bowling finger, spoke glowingly of the seamers

“I think the bowling squad in that change room there is the best in the world,” he said. “I believe that and I’m very confident that we are the best in the world. To have the fast-bowling stocks that we’ve got as the Australian cricket team at the moment we’re very lucky. But in saying that, the boys are working their backsides off.”

Coach Justin Langer played in the last Test of the 2001 series — the last time Australia did not give up the urn in England. His insistence that the side swallow their egos and bowl in a manner unaccustomed was at the centre of the change of fortunes. Having six fit quicks helped too.

Smith will go into the Test 300-odd runs short of Don Bradman’s record for a series. It’s improbable but not impossible that he will overtake the Don given the form he is in.

“He’s a world-class player,” Root said. “You need to take any chance you get at him early. The first Test is probably the difference between the two sides,” he said. “They’ve bowled well.”

Paine was, however, the one who addressed the team as they dealt with the devastation of letting a win slip at Headingley and held them together when England threatened to rob them of another at Old Trafford.