Australia delighted captain Michael Clarke by showing significant resilience to turn a losing position in Melbourne into another crushing Ashes victory.
Clarke’s players have dominated England throughout this winter’s series and duly went 4-0 up with an eight-wicket win at the MCG.
The Australia captain was not about to fuel conjecture about the possibility of completing a 5-0 whitewash in Sydney next week, after Chris Rogers (116) and Shane Watson (83 not out) had made light of a target of 231.
But he was full of praise for his winning collective, who conceded a first-innings deficit but still eased home again in the end with more than four sessions to spare.
Clarke said: “That was probably the greatest challenge for this team. I think for the first time in this series we were behind in a Test match and we had to find a way to claw our way back into it.
“We let ourselves down with the bat – certainly our top six batters didn’t bat as well as we would have liked in the first innings.”
Mitchell Johnson was then to the fore again, alongside off-spinner Nathan Lyon this time, as England collapsed in their second innings.
Rogers and Brad Haddin, who passed 50 for the fifth time in the series from number seven to narrow England’s mid-match lead, were also key performers.
“Our bowlers deserve a lot of credit,” added Clarke.
“We experienced some deserved criticism for our poor (first-innings) batting performance, and the way our bowlers were able to turn it around – knocking them over for 179 – and the way we batted today, you see the real positive sides of this team.”
Australia proved they will not let up even though the Ashes are in the bag.