Cook looks round as Australia's Shane Watson attempts to catch the ball during Sunday's play. Associated Press

In a way, the Ashes series that concluded on Sunday went according to plan: England won it, and both sides bowled better than they batted. But on a match-by-match, day-by-day, session-by-session basis, nothing about this series was predictable.

There were unexpected passages of play throughout, games lurched in favor of one team and back to the other, and three of them had thrilling finishes: the first at Trent Bridge, the fourth at Chester-le-Street and the fifth at The Oval. And while England won the vital passages of play, the balance of the series wasn't as clear-cut as the 3-0 score line suggests.

Statistically, there wasn't much difference between the sides. England scored just 121 runs more than Australia during the series, and lost just four fewer wickets, with the hosts averaging 33.6 runs per wicket to the visitors' 30.7. Moreover, Australia was supposed to be a fine bowling side who couldn't bat, but its batsmen held their own compared with England's, and it was in the bowling department that the hosts were statistically superior.

Three of the top four wicket-takers were English, and the only Australian bowlers other than Ryan Harris to average under 30 were James Faulkner and Steven Smith, with just six and four series wickets respectively. Conversely, any difference in batting performance between the two sides was almost entirely down to one man: Ian Bell, with 562 runs at 62.44, including three centuries, two more than anyone else managed. Bell topped both the run-scoring chart and the averages, but the next three highest averages were all Australian— Chris Woakes, who only played one game and scored 42 runs, was the only other England player to average more than 40—and there was only one other England player in the top six run-scorers.

Four of Australia's top five hit centuries in the series; only three of England's did. England's 377 in its first innings in the final match at The Oval was its highest in the series; Australia had managed 492 in its first innings in the same game and 527-7 in its first innings at Old Trafford. So it isn't that the Australian batsmen can't do it; it is just that they can't do it at the right time.

For much of this series, Australia also didn't get the rub of the green, especially in match three, at Old Trafford, where the weather intervened to deny the visitors a possible victory. Questionable umpiring decisions affected both sides, but Australia bore the brunt of them. The visitors did have a dose of luck at The Oval, however, after their captain Michael Clarke tried to make a game of a rain-affected match with an aggressive third-innings declaration, and England only failed to pull off a chase of 227 in 44 overs because of bad light.

It was a disappointing decision for everyone except Australia, because the light really wasn't that bad, and this was just the latest of a run of dubious bad-light calls during the series. The umpires can only follow the rules laid down by the International Cricket Council, but when teams are denied a crack at victory and the climax of a game is ruined for the spectators in perfectly playable light because of a number on a meter, it is time for the ICC to take another look at those rules.

Clarke is a thrillingly attacking captain, and his attitude on the final day, promoting his team's most belligerent batsmen and declaring early, turned a match that had lost a day and a half to rain and looked to be meandering toward a draw into a nerve-racking thriller.

It nearly lost Australia the game, and the team was clearly relieved to get off the park at the end, but Clarke, already 3-0 down in the series, was prepared to lose the game in order to have even the slightest chance of winning.

Alastair Cook of England lifts the urn after winning the Ashes during day five of the 5th Test match at the Oval, Sunday. Getty Images

Aggressive instincts and tactics aren't much use, however, if your team keeps losing the vital moments, as Australia did in this series. Clarke's positive instincts are repeatedly undermined by a team that fails to rise to the occasion. England captain Alastair Cook, by contrast, has been excessively slammed for his team's defensiveness by everyone from England fans to debutant Australian all-rounder James Faulkner, who declared that the third-day Oval crowd should get a refund after the hosts added just 215 in 98.3 overs. That was, however, in the context of a game in which Australia had scored almost 500 in the first innings, and a series in which England was 3-0 up.

England used those tactics because they worked, and because the team wanted to win the series without losing a game, which it did. Comparisons with the great Australian teams either side of the turn of the millennium, which would go for a win in all circumstances, are wide of the mark: this is a good England team, not a great one, and it can't afford to be as unguardedly aggressive. More pertinently, England won the series 3-0, and Faulkner, a 23-year-old Twenty20 player with no previous Test experience, and a member of a team that has just been thrashed, is on thin ice commenting negatively on the tactics of the team that did the thrashing.

England's other notable tactic in this series was to prepare mostly dry, fairly slow pitches that offered assistance to the bowlers, although Old Trafford was a little bouncier and The Oval was largely unresponsive. Australia looked at its best in those two matches—in which it coincidentally won both the tosses—conditions allowing its batsmen to impose themselves, so expect a few batting paradises when the return leg of the double-header Ashes starts in November.

Then Australia just needs to decide who it wants in its team. The makeup of its batting finally seems to be falling into place, although the selectors are evidently still unsure in what order the various players should come in, and David Warner badly needs some runs. Faulkner, with six wickets and two quick 20-odds in the Oval game, would be unlucky to lose his place, but Australia has a lot of bowling options. Harris, Peter Siddle, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon will probably start, but Jackson Bird and even Mitchell Johnson will be pushing for a place, as will James Pattinson once he's recovered from injury.

For England, Joe Root has probably done enough to keep his place at the top of the order, but the identity of the team's sixth batsman or all-rounder remains unclear, and the third seamer's place remains perennially up in the air. Tim Bresnan, Chris Tremlett and Steven Finn will presumably all be in the touring party, so the major unresolved issue when it comes to picking the 16 or 17 players who will travel to Australia are the backup batsman and the second spinner. Jonny Bairstow, discarded for this game, will be up against the likes of James Taylor and the uncapped Gary Ballance for the batting place, while Simon Kerrigan's slightly traumatic debut—in which his first two, long hop-riddled Test overs disappeared for 28—possibly opens the door for Monty Panesar or even James Tredwell.

Any team fresh from a 3-0 victory goes into a return series against the same team as hot favorites. Still, at only one point—the Lord's game—did England look like a truly dominant side. On its home pitches, with home support, Australia will challenge England every step of the way. Australia was competitive throughout this series, however. It didn't help much.