ENGLAND’S cricketers have been so dominant over Australia, so utterly superior in every department, that it seems somewhat unfair to single out any of their players for special praise.

This has been a team triumph in every sense of the word, with every member of the playing squad contributing and every member of the backroom staff helping to create an environment that has enabled one of the best English sides in recent memory to flourish.

The pre-tour preparation was meticulous, the planning and strategy has undermined Australia at every turn and, under the most intense pressure imaginable, England’s players have performed to a standard far in excess of what even the most optimistic of supporters was anticipating when the touring party left British soil in November.

Yet even amid such allround triumph, individual successes have stood out.

Two players in particular have risen to the occasion superbly, and ironically they are the two players most aggressively targeted by the Australians in the build-up to the Ashes.

Alastair Cook ended the series as the leading run scorer, while James Anderson will return to England as the leading wicket taker by a distance.

Both players were supposed to struggle in Australian conditions; both players have displayed the kind of mental toughness and conviction that is all too rare in English sportsmen and women.

Cook, in particular, has turned a host of pre-tour predictions on their head.

The Essex opener suffered a miserable summer, averaging 13 in one especially ugly eight-innings streak and displaying a range of technical deficiencies that led many observers to call for his demotion from the side.

He was nervous and hesitant, planting his front foot too early, delaying his back lift and betraying signs of mental frailty via a series of ticks and routines that reeked of discomfort.

Under the tutelage of former England opener Graham Gooch, he worked on addressing his technical faults, but just as importantly, never lost sight of the talent and ability that had made him such a success in the early days of his Test career.

Form is temporary, class is permanent, and Cook has the latter in spades. He has proved it this series, scoring 766 runs in seven innings, and compiling two centuries and a double-century along the way.

Just as impressively, Wednesday morning’s efforts meant he has now batted for more than 36 hours this series.

In an era in which the advent of Twenty20 is supposed to have eradicated the patience and skills required to compile a mammoth score, Cook has evoked an era when batsmen thought nothing of batting through five or six sessions.

There has been nothing too fancy about Cook’s batting, just an ability to remain calm and composed through the good balls, while all the while gorging on the inevitable bad balls that Australia’s bowlers have served up.

In terms of overcoming adversity, however, the England vice-captain does not have a monopoly on dramatic reinvention.

When England last toured Australia four years ago, a youthful Anderson was utterly overawed by the experience.

He took a paltry five wickets in six innings, at an average of more than 82, and appeared to rely on a style and technique that was completely unsuited to Australian conditions.

Yes, he might have been the star of England’s summer, swinging the ball around corners to skittle out Pakistan and Bangladesh, but with a Kookaburra ball in his hand, on flat, unresponsive pitches, how on earth would he cope?

By morphing into an English version of Glenn McGrath, that’s how, and by taking 24 wickets in the series, Anderson proved once and for all that he is more than simply a seamer who needs conditions and pitches to fall in his favour.

The Lancastrian hasn’t claimed his wickets through extravagant movement this winter.

He has earned them through the kind of metronomic consistency that made McGrath such a potent weapon for so many years.

In the past, if an England captain threw the ball to Anderson, it was liable to end up anywhere. Now, when Strauss turns to the Burnleyborn bowler, he can rely on a consistency of line and length from the off.

Consistency, patience, ability. If you don’t have any, as Australia have found all too often this winter, you’re going to be in trouble. If, however, as Cook and Anderson can extol, you have all three, you’re well on the way to being one of the best international players in the world.