What to do when you have an unplanned free month in a galaxy far, far away? When what you have come for has been completed 30 days ahead of schedule. Going home early would take even more money than you've already spent. Besides, home is deep in the depths of winter. Where you are is warm and unusually welcoming, all things considered.

Welcome to the life of the travelling England supporter in Australia.

The Ashes, which started in Perth on November 21, was scheduled to conclude in Sydney on January 8. But, thanks largely to England's reckless approach to batting in the first two matches - which was outrageously disrespectful to their opponents, the fans of both teams, the neutrals watching from afar, the game itself and not least to themselves - Australia seized an unbeatable 3-0 lead when they won the Adelaide Test by 82 runs on Sunday.

What had been set to unfold over 49 days was rudely rushed to a climax in a scant 19. Cricket was played on only 11 of those days. Of an allocated 2,250 overs, just 786.3 - not much more than a third of the possible total - were needed to decide what some people consider cricket's grandest occasion. The most deluded among them will continue to think so, even in the wake of the current conclusive evidence to the contrary.

"If you are going to play silly shots, you're going to have problems," David Gower told BBC Radio 4 on Monday in his post mortem of perhaps the most shambolic series in Test history.

Gower should know. Silly shots ended more than a few of his 1,025 first-class and list A innings. But when he didn't succumb to silliness he was sublime. And when he did slip, his teammates tended not to plunge off the nearest cliff like lemmings. Unlike Ben Stokes' sorry lot.

Gower reached 50 just once and averaged 25.00 in the 1981 series, but Ian Botham's heroics ensured the languid left-hander's lack of success went unnoticed. Gower captained England in the 1985 Ashes, when he delivered scores of 86, 166, 215 and 157 in his nine innings, in which he averaged 81.33.

What matters most is that England won four of Gower's seven Ashes campaigns. And also that, despite his lapses into lala-land, he never batted as if he was late for a date. Again, unlike Stokes' stooges.

Difficult, isn't it, to remember how bullish the English were before the series started. Good thing we don't have to remember.

Here's Stuart Broad in October: "You wouldn't be outlandish in thinking - it's actually not an opinion, it's a fact - it's probably the worst Australian team since 2010 when England last won. And it's the best English team since 2010."

Here's Michael Vaughan: "The rest are in their 30s now, so the age profile is a concern for them. You can look over the hill very quickly."

Here's Monty Panesar: "It'll be 3-2 or 3-1 in England's favour."

Not forgetting the prince of puerility, podcaster Piers Morgan: "We're gonna beat you 5-0!"

David Lloyd made the same prediction. Alastair Cook said 3-1 in England's favour, the same as Mark Ramprakash. Graeme Swann was slightly more circumspect - 3-2, he said. To England, of course.

"The comments made by some of the English ex-players before the series were eyebrow-raising," Rassie van der Dussen said on Monday. "I saw someone saying the other day that the bazballers are trying to go back to playing normal cricket. When we scored 20 runs off 100 balls they criticised us."

South Africa were also criticised and questioned for not scheduling any Test cricket at home this summer. The confetti was still swirling around Lord's in June, in the afterglow of their five-wicket win over the Aussies in the WTC final, when those questions came from some of the English press.

How dare CSA not make provision for a Boxing Day Test! Or a New Year Test!

That the suits needed the time and opportunity to upgrade the country's grounds ahead of the 2027 men's World Cup didn't register. Besides, the dearth of Test cricket in South Africa in the summer of 2025/26 wasn't news - it had been decided when the current FTP was arrived at three years ago.

Considering England's ongoing trainsmash in Australia, and the fact that South Africans in their hundreds of thousands are about to be glued to the fourth edition of the SA20, which right now shimmers with glorious uncertainty over which of the six teams harbouring some of the best players around might win the trophy in a way the Ashes can no longer, didn't Van der Dussen feel like telling the critics and questioners to shut up and sit down?

"My Test record didn't shoot the lights out, so I can't comment too much. But I suppose so."

How measured. How modest - Van der Dussen averages 30.16 in his 32 Test innings. And how un-English - he wouldn't have been seen dead flailing like a man losing a battle with a broken umbrella in a rainstorm, whatever Stokes and Brendon McCullum told him to do.

That didn't mean he was happy about South Africa's Testless summer: "The scheduling is shocking. The Boxing Day Test and the New Year's Test have always been features of our season. Hopefully it won't happen again.

"Luckily we have the SA20, and it's a really exciting time. At least there's some cricket for people to watch. Forget what's happening wherever, I think it's going to be a great month."

No doubt, because the SA20 has filled grounds like nothing else in South Africa. Not even games in any format against any opponents. You read that correctly: India, England and Australia don't draw crowds in this country like the SA20 does.

They will flood the stands again when the tournament starts with a game between Mumbai Indians Cape Town - the defending champions - and Durban's Super Giants at Newlands on Friday. There will be great anticipation at the prospect of seeing Corbin Bosch, Trent Boult, Jos Buttler, George Linde, Heinrich Klaasen, Kagiso Rabada, Kwena Maphaka, Aiden Markram and Noor Ahmed, or a combination thereof, in action. The ground will buzz with the unpredictability of it all.

That's unlike at the MCG on Saturday, when the stands will also be full. But not because it matters which team wins or loses. It is, whatever the bluster on both sides to the contrary, as dead as a rubber could possibly be. As is the SCG Test that starts on January 4. We've had bazball. Here comes zombieball.

There is something desperate and sad about people playing an irrelevant match, and that would likely not be staged at all but for contractual obligations. The same goes for the spectators at these painful spectacles. The English among them in Melbourne will have the excuse that they have already paid their money and made their bookings, but why would you bother if you're Australian?

Then again, Australians don't seem to believe Test cricket exists in their country except in December and January. And so watch they must and will, and nevermind reality.

Because it's tradition! As is the notion that the Ashes are as good as cricket gets because it is the original Test series. Closer to the truth is that it is an unfortunate, embarrassing colonial hangover unsuited to its place in the modern world.

How about we decolonise the urn by taking it away from England and Australia and awarding it instead to the winner of series between the top two ranked teams, whoever they may be? Here's a more radical idea: maybe it's time to burn the urn.

While we're at it, let's make sure no series grinds on for longer than three Tests. England's players in Australia, and their travelling supporters, wouldn't be human if they didn't give that idea some thought.

Delusional? Maybe, but not enough to keep believing the Ashes is Test cricket's be-all and end-all. Other Test teams are available, some of them better than the sides who will line up at the MCG on Friday. South Africa proved that at Lord's in June, as have England - emphatically - in 11 recent days.

We don't need the Ashes, and comparatively few of us are obsessed with it. If England and Australia must have it, they should be compelled to play it in a galaxy far, far away from the rest of us.