After England secured a first series win in Australia for 24 years yesterday morning, Assistant Editor Scott Wilson wallows in the warm afterglow of success.

ROLF Harris, Kylie Minogue, Natalie Imbruglia, Crocodile Dundee, Kevin Rudd, Mark Schwarzer, Mark Viduka, Tim Cahill – we have beaten them all. Dame Edna Everage, can you hear me? Dame Edna Everage, your boys took a hell of a beating!

As a sports writer, I’ve been waiting for as long as I can remember to write that.

Yes, there have been Ashes victories before, but while they were worth celebrating, they were recorded on home soil.

Playing in Australia has always been different.

No matter how strong the England side, or how supposedly weak the opposition, winning an Ashes series Down Under has repeatedly proved an elusive goal.

January 1987 was the last time it had happened, a date that was becoming to English cricket what 1966 is to English football – an evocation of past success; a constant reminder of the inadequacies of the present.

Not any more. When Chris Tremlett claimed the final Australian wicket yesterday morning, 24 years of hurt were over.

Two-and-a-half decades of incessant Antipodean crowing, finally silenced by the roars of the Barmy Army. A plethora of pathetic performances, summed up by Steve Harmison’s wretched opening ball in 2006, rendered irrelevant by a glorious series success. Weeks and weeks of sleep-broken nights, all made worthwhile by the sight of an Australian novice looking crestfallenly at his shattered stumps.

“I’m ecstatic,” said Shotley Bridge-born allrounder Paul Collingwood, who announced his retirement from Test cricket during the final throes of the game. “We’ve had so many tours out here like the last time, when we were beaten 5-0, but we’ve finally turned it around. It doesn’t get any better than this. This is why we play the game, to savour moments like this.”

Delicious words of English triumph, made all the more welcome because of their rarity.

Let’s be honest, sport in this country isn’t supposed to be like this.

WE’RE much more suited to failure, occasionally heroic, more often than not unremittingly miserable, like last summer’s football World Cup campaign.

Disappointment is a default setting for English sport, so to watch a group of players live up to their billing as world-class performers and comprehensively outplay their opponents in every facet of the game is an alien concept.

Whisper it, but it’s probably how being an Australian usually feels.

Having started the series as favourites thanks to their Ashes win at home in 2009, England’s players did not slip into the traditional trap of freezing as soon as the pressure became more intense.

They were steelier than that, and displaying a confidence and assurance that was peculiarly un-English, they calmly set about making their technical superiority count.

“To win the Ashes here in style will be something which will live long in the memory,” said jubilant captain Andrew Strauss.

Indeed it will, but enough, for now, of English success. Just as enjoyable, from this vantage point, is the sight of Australian misery.

Let’s be honest, for all that it is a warm and welcoming place, there’s a lot to dislike about Australia.

It’s sunny for a start, really sunny, with the pictures from the Sydney Cricket Ground in marked contrast to the freezing misery that has greeted Englishmen whenever they have opened their curtains this winter.

There’s a swagger about the place that while occasionally tipping over into arrogance, gives the country and its people a sense of justified contentment about their place in the world.

And when it comes to sport, there’s so much bloody success. Cricket, rugby union, rugby league, not to mention just about every Olympic sport going. We used to have football – then Australia beat England 3-1 at Upton Park in 2003.

Australians like nothing better than to win.

Now, for one glorious hiatus in history, they are coming to terms with what it feels like to lose.

“After 135 years, 730 matches and 417 players, Australia have finally fielded...OUR WORST XI,” screamed the back page of the Sydney Morning Herald. And Graham Taylor thought having his head turned into a turnip was bad.

“It is one thing to be flogged by the oncemighty West Indies after the upheaval of World Series cricket and rebel tours of South Africa,”

wrote sportswriter Malcolm Conn in The Australian.

“It is quite another to be humiliated by a third-ranked nation which has one superstar, the South-African born Kevin Pietersen, when he gets his head right.” You can almost taste the bile from here.

In fairness, there has also been plenty of level-headed reaction to the events of the past six weeks, with most Australian supporters accepting their side had simply been beaten by better opponents. There has also been acclaim for the performance of England’s players, most notably bowler James Anderson and batsman Alastair Cook.

There are quibbles over here. The series, which took place during the English night, was shown on Sky Television, thus restricting the ability of many supporters to see it live. There are sporadic backbench suggestions that the Ashes might be restored to the list of “Crown Jewels” that can only be shown on terrestrial television, but the Government, with its cosy relationship with media magnate Rupert Murdoch, is unlikely to budge any time soon.

Radio Four listeners missed yesterday’s historic last wicket because of the shipping forecast, and some commentators have even claimed that the weakness of the Australian side reduces the significance of a 3-1 series win.

That’s nonsense. This is a piece of sporting history that will endure. My only hope is that it doesn’t have to provide succour to English cricketing fans for the next 24 years.