In the end, Michael Clarke was only half way up, and so was neither up nor down. He had just walked through his teammates' guard of honour at The Oval to mark the end of the match, the series and his career, and was making his way up the stairs to the dressing room when a backward glance showed him that the other Australians had waited to felicitate Chris Rogers, who was also retiring this day. So there was Clarke, stranded on the threshold.

Eventually, that loose end was tied up with due ceremony and warm words all round. But not many others were for the summer. On the last day of this kooky Ashes series, three of the four wickets Australia needed were taken by Peter Siddle, who some of the Australians thought should have been playing since the first Test, and certainly in the previous Test, but did not get a game until now.  He was Australia's leading bowler in the game, and yet may not be in the XI for Australia's next Test appearance in Bangladesh in October.

The other was taken Mitch Marsh, Australia's best along with Siddle, but about whom the selectors equivocated as if playing some sort of game of family feud, unable to decide which of Mitch and brother Shaun offered more and balanced the team better. To add to the internecine confusion, the chief selector also is called Marsh, no relation. Whether or not Rod Marsh has been select enough in his selections remains a live question. "I'm not silly enough to get into that," said Clarke, who is now neither selector nor captain. Instead, he thanked Marsh and coach Darren Lehmann, and even the media; this was not a day picking at nits or scars.

England's last resistance was mounted by Moeen Ali and Stuart Broad, who at No. 8 and 9 in their order have given England their most productive partnerships in this series. Speculation abounds that for England's next engagement, against Pakistan in the middle East, Ali will open the batting. Winning in this series made sense only in that it wasn't losing.

Three of the four leading runmakers in this series were Australian. The other was Joe Root, who was named man-of-the-series, from which you might deduce that it was as much about when and where he made his runs as how many. His first hundred in Cardiff gave England a lead it never lost in the rubber, his second at Trent Bridge clinched it. But even he wondered aloud what might have happened if Brad Haddin had caught him for nought on day one of Test one.

The leading scorer was Steve Smith, with 508. The next, with 480, was Rogers, who was named Australia's man of this series and has led all runmakers in aggregate in the last three Ashes series, constituting all the Ashes cricket he played. "I've never been up here," he said at the presentation. Nor will he ever be again. Historians will look back at this end and wonder if he retired or no longer was eligible for the age group. He will be, as he was for most of his career, missed.

Broad led all wicket-takers in this series, but the next four names were all Australian. Here is statistical dissimulation, if ever there was. England won this series because of the bowling of Jimmy Anderson and Steve Finn in the third Test and Broad and Ben Stokes in the fourth. It is still so that bowlers win matches, in this series quickly, abruptly and decisively.

Foremost of the Australian bowlers across the five Tests was off-spinner Nathan Lyon. Clarke made a point of this at match's end, and well he might, for Lyon's gradual emergence is due at least in part to Clarke's preparedness to use him up front. Whatever else worked or failed in the Clarke era, his on-field captaincy was never less than energetically pro-active, attracting praise this week from Ian Chappell, whose philosophical heir he was.

Least of the Australian bowlers was Mitch Johnson, whose 15 wickets at 35 pale beside his 37 at 14 in Australia 18 months ago. Johnson's bowling was not qualitatively poor in this series, and sometimes was frightening, but at other times was unaccountably meek. He arrived as Australia's matchwinner, but won only one match.

So, pick the eyes out of that jumble, if  you will. Even in the moment of victory on Sunday, the Australians did not know whether to laugh, cry or seek counselling. Siddle gave an instinctive yelp as the catch from Ali settled in Peter Nevill's gloves, but thereafter all the language, verbal and body, was perfunctory. It was very much battle won, war lost. It led to awkward moments during the rituals, since there there are no protocols for handling this merry-go-round. But the crossed arms and long faces at the handing over of the urn showed that when comes to the Ashes, there is no second place, only dust.

It was impossible to the last to get a fix on this series, which might have been because the teams were ships passing in the night: England rising, Australia sliding into what is now definitively transition. In his only sharp moment post-match, Clarke thought pitches and damnation of them had played too great a part. The surfaces for the first two Tests were described as slow and flat, he said, yet both had finished inside four days, from which he inferred that the criticism had led to spicier decks for the last three Tests, and even shorter matches. He couched his remarks in terms of value for money for spectators and viewers.

Yet other than ticket-holders, who were refunded anyway, it is improbable that many felt short-changed by this series. Intrigued, puzzled, thrilled, appalled, bewildered, fascinated, but not ripped off, surely. One effect of the headlong pace of the series and the dominance of the bowlers was to reassert the value the of century. In the Australia-India series last summer, there were 15 in four Tests; they were like Camrys. In this series, there were five in five, and each felt more like the completion of a journey rather than a Sunday afternoon joyride. As a caveat to the forgoing thought about the role of bowlers in bringing results, all five tons were match-winning.

If none of this properly explains the enigma that was the 2015 Ashes, it doesn't matter much. "When you change the government, you change the country," said Paul Keating. It is also true of Test captains. Generational transformation already was upon the Australian team, and when they convene again, it will be not only under a new captain, but as an almost unrecognisable ensemble from the one that began this series. Others' mistakes will become their lessons.

As for England, they are winners and so grinners, though even winning and grinning in this series had left all scratching their heads. At the final media debriefing, when Alastair Cook began to speak of Broad's "length", Root dissolved into helpless giggles, on which boom-tish note the media officer thought was a good place to finish the 2015 Ashes.