Its funny how people jump on certain players because they had 1 good series. For example Simon Jones. If he can keep on playing well over a season then he will deserve to be on the Ranking top 10. Its still early days for him yet.
This article angered me
http://content-nz.cricinfo.com/australia/content/story/219173.html What a fool Lillie is, 'Let ponting go and focus on his batting' what a load of crap, he was one of the few Australian batsmen who actually got runs. He has batted better WITH captaincy. Losing 1 series, no matter how important should never be a good reason for sacking the captain, especially because its not where the problem lay. He wants Shane Warne as captain, good pick but do you really want to change captains to someone comming so close to the end of them playing. Not only that, its risky because Warnes form might drop with the captaincy as his responsibility. Do Australia have a vice captain? Perhaps they could make Warne vice captain and he could have sufficient imput into fields etc. which he seems to already get anyway.
What lost Australia the ashes was Out of form batsmen (especially Martyn and Gilchrist who were terrible and as senior members of the team needed to step up to the plate), no 4th bowler, all the ones used were poor, some harsh decisions at important times (but we won't dwell heavily on that, its part of cricket and no excuse) and last but not least important dropped catches.