IT wasn’t just the likes of Brad Haddin, Michael Clarke and Mitchell Johnson who got a metaphorical kicking in Cardiff last week at the Ashes Test, because never have so many experts got it so wrong.

I’m not talking about the plethora of people who called an Australian success – this reporter included – but rather, those who decided by about 11.30am on the opening morning that the Cardiff Test match was an abject failure.

Your more reactionary pundits, your Geoffrey Boycott, Ian Botham, Michael Vaughan, fantastic players – and two of them are terrific value as broadcasters, the other one is Beefy – were criticising Cardiff as a Test venue before Joe Root had even begun the England fightback.

The pitch was too slow, the weather was too Welsh – it doesn’t rain anywhere else in England apparently – the capacity crowd wasn’t big enough, the partisan home advantage had been squandered by playing in this foreign land.

And after the positive cricket played against New Zealand, what were we even doing on this slow track at a miserable and overcast Swalec Stadium?

Even David Lloyd had written the contest off as a bore draw before lunch on day one.

As it turned out, they’d all got it horribly wrong.

1300 runs, forty wickets, four days of superb action. The sun even shone.

The supposedly slow and dreary pitch at Cardiff was absolutely a belter, but only if you’ve got an England perspective. It was a pitch to nullify Mitchells Stark and especially Johnson, with enough swing and uneven bounce to reward James Anderson and Stuart Broad.

For years England were routinely smashed in home Ashes series, and many people wondered why we seemed to be tailoring pitches to suit Glenn McGrath or Shane Warne. No longer.

It makes perfect sense to prepare wickets more to England’s liking that Australia’s and in every other regard, criticism of Cardiff falls down.

The England players like playing at the Swalec – they haven’t lost there in seven years – and the atmosphere was again fantastic. Cardiff also understands – as well they should by now – how to put on a show and the level of razzmatazz was spot on.

Despite all the doom and gloom predictions; the reality is that Australia have won just two of their last 16 Test matches in away Ashes series.

So much like with Cardiff’s Swalec Stadium, rumours of England’s demise in this series appear to have been greatly premature.