Much of England’s success has come because the bowlers have managed to nullify batsmen who have been used to dominating pretty much all who have bowled against them. It takes something special to do that.

In recent years only one other team has really challenged that dominance — India, who have used the likes of spinners Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble to do so. In this series the pressure has been put on the Aussies by bowlers continuing to improve on their ability to swing the ball.

There was a time when we did not understand what is now known as reverse swing. English conditions have traditionally favoured orthodox swing, hence decades — centuries, even — of English bowlers and fielders religiously looking after the ball, shining one side to keep it as pristine as possible until the next new ball was due.

If the ball stopped swinging, the wisdom of years decreed that the captain toss the ball to the spinners, of whom there were invariably at least two, and they bowled until that new ball. Nowadays the swing bowlers are potentially almost always in the game.

It is to England’s advantage that Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones in particular have mastered the art of reverse swing better than anybody in the opposing ranks. One should give the bowlers all due credit for doing so.

I remember playing against Pakistan in the 1980s and early 1990s, ignorant, I have to admit, of this phenomenon and bemused how an older ball would continue to swing.

Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis were arch-exponents, but even the medium-pacers such as Mudassar Nazar enjoyed using the older ball. “Mud” did me for a pastime, it seemed, but he did get a few others too and was the destroyer at Lord’s in 1982 when he picked up a bagful of wickets quickly on the last day and set up a victory.

Anyone who can keep a ball swinging will test a batsman’s powers of concentration, whether medium-pace or quicker. Another who springs to mind is Lance Cairns. Chris’s dad, at a brisk medium- pace, was not so fiery as the younger version but swung the ball consistently — into the right-handers and away from me and other left-handers.

Right-handers would try to make sure that the front pad was in position down the track and just outside off stump to negate the lbw and provide a second line of defence.

For the left-hander, it was a question more of working hard not to play at anything that was swinging out of the zone beneath one’s eyes and therefore into the area outside the off stump, where one would be stretching at the ball and unlikely to do much more than guide it towards the slip cordon.

Playing the ball as late as possible was part of the technique, so in contrast to the right-handers, I thought it made little sense to be lunging too far down the pitch with the front foot, as that simply took one more quickly into the danger zone and closer to balls that could otherwise be safely left alone.

That is, in a nutshell what the Australia left-handers should have been considering, especially against Flintoff, who has been truly outstanding.

I would add emphatically that he bowls a considerably heavier ball than Cairns ever did and so has posed similar problems at much greater pace, giving batsmen less time to consider their response to any given ball.

Not only that, he has also managed to slip in the odd one that comes back in to those left-handers, adding complication to the art of survival. All in all he has become a real handful. Jones, also bowling at good pace, has given great support. Compared to these two I have to say that old “Lancer” would have been much the easier option.

At Trent Bridge over the past few days even normal swing, if I can call it that, has played its part. Matthew Hoggard enjoyed more “English” conditions on Friday with a bit of cloud cover around, to play his part.

Looking at the way the left-handers have played it all, only Justin Langer seems to have made the effort to play as I have outlined, and there was evidence of that yesterday.

Matthew Hayden has stuck to his old ways, which have served him well previously, by trusting in his reach down the pitch, but time and again his front foot has been in the wrong place when the ball has swung in to him. It was the same yesterday.

At the other end Langer was doing his best not to get drawn too far down the pitch and was leaving the shot noticeably later, but even he was tempted to play away from his body and it was a shame that Andrew Strauss, having caught an absolute blinder earlier in the day, put down that particular chance.

Adam Gilchrist showed us, fine player that he is, that he was going to trust to his eye rather more than a change in technique to try to get himself out of his poor trot. When he swung his bat to match Hoggard’s inswing it was good to see in two senses: 1) seeing the ball going for six is always fun; and 2) even Hoggard, miffed though he might have been at being tonked in such a fashion, could be optimistic that Gilchrist was still likely to be offering the bowlers a chance.

Jones got the benefit of Gilchrist’s continuing fallibility with a dismissal that echoed others in the series.

For Australian left-handers it may be too late to adjust. For so long they have been so dominant that maybe their machismo has blinded them to the threat; crucially so.