The refrain coming out of the mouths of the Australian players has been strikingly similar as they reflect on the state of the Ashes series going into this week’s fourth Test at Trent Bridge. “We haven’t played our best cricket yet, which is encouraging, given that we’re still level at 1-1,” they say. “When we start playing as well as we can, things will be different.”

Well, maybe. But maybe Australia are not playing well because England are not allowing them to.

The real story of the series so far is how well England’s game plans have worked. Other teams may have devised strategies to spike Australia’s guns, but no team in recent memory has carried them out with quite such aplomb.

Duncan Fletcher, the coach, and Michael Vaughan, the captain, deserve full credit for what they have achieved. They have done their homework and been well rewarded. England have not bowled particularly well at Australia’s tailenders, but otherwise they have got most things right.

Sure, if Australia start playing as well as they can, they will retain the Ashes, but the $64,000 question is whether they can.

There’s no reason, for example, to suppose that England’s tactics for Matthew Hayden will stop working. Hayden looks like somebody so rattled by Andrew Flintoff’s restless probing from round and over the wicket that he’s forgotten how to build an innings. In fact, given his age and form, there’s a chance Hayden will never again play as well as he can in Test cricket.

Nor is he the only Australian batsman having sleepless nights about Flintoff and Simon Jones. England’s reverse-swing-based tactics for dealing with the three other left-handers in the tourists’ top seven — Justin Langer, Simon Katich and Adam Gilchrist — have been a conspicuous success. None has yet scored a hundred and the averages of all but Langer, who has made 201 runs at 33.50, languish in the 20s. Their paucity of runs is emphasised by the fact that before the present series Hayden and Gilchrist were averaging more than 50 in Test cricket.

It is pretty clear now that, for all that they knew of England’s improved results, Australia arrived for this tour underestimating their opponents. Back in April, Ponting was quoted in an Australian newspaper as saying: “If we start (the Ashes series) well, I can see it being a fairly one-sided affair. It is our whole focus to win the first day of the first Test. Things should look after themselves from there.”

Those comments make it fairly plain that the Australian captain expected this series to go the same way as so many Ashes series before, with English resistance crumbling at the first sign of trouble. But although England lost the first day of the first Test (just) and the first Test itself (by a distance), their spirit remained intact.

They came back and hit the Australian bowlers with sledgehammer force on the first day of the second Test, when Ponting generously — or should that be arrogantly? — gave them first use of a good surface. England have been hitting them hard ever since and winning on average around three sessions to Australia’s one.

Complacency is at the heart of Australia’s present predicament and it is arguable that they still haven’t faced up to the full magnitude of the situation.

John Buchanan, the coach, still insists that England’s top three are prone to get out in predictable ways, but there is no point Glenn McGrath finding Marcus Trescothick’s outside edge, or knocking out Vaughan’s off stump, if Gilchrist spills the catch or McGrath’s front foot oversteps the line.

The temperature may drop if Australia go on to win the series, but at the moment the heat is on Buchanan and his methods. Australia have long been held up as the most professional outfit in world cricket, but this argument simply cannot be sustained. That honour probably belongs to England.