Glory days: England managed to win an Ashes series away from home in 2010/11. Credit:Mark Baker But what if the opposite were true – that the difficulty of winning away is good for cricket, that it is nothing new, that it doesn't need to be "fixed", and that far from making the game predictable and needing fixing, it inflects it with a tensile strength that has increased its appeal? Home advantage is nothing new, and if it made cricket too dully predictable, the game would not have lasted much into the 20th century, let alone the 21st. The whole point of the Ashes, remember, was the remarkable achievement of a team winning away from home. Winning away has always required special teams, such as the Australian eras of Trumper, Bradman, Chappell and Warne, and the England teams led by their great bowlers Barnes, Tate, Larwood, Tyson, Snow, Botham and, in 2010/11, Anderson and Broad. The patterns repeat in non-Ashes cricket: India and Pakistan have never won a series in Australia, and Australia have won in those countries at the rate of once every generation. If winning away wasn't so hard, it wouldn't be so darn special. Where home advantage is weak, so cricket is weak.

Cricket administrators have long felt the pressure to help touring teams. The solution was once thought to be neutral umpiring. Home umpires bore the blame from whingeing tourists. Hey presto, neutral umpires made no difference. Contemporary initiatives include using foreign countries' balls. It is ridiculous that the most important piece of cricket equipment, the ball, is not standardised internationally. Whether it's Kookaburra, Duke or, I don't know, Steeden, a ball should be a ball should be a ball. Commercial partnerships and economic nationalism have prevented it, Australia is trying to ameliorate it by using Duke balls for half the Sheffield Shield season, but surely common sense would say that cricket cannot provide a level playing field until it provides a cricket ball that is a cricket ball. But would it make a real difference? Possibly, a neutral ball would do as little as neutral umpires. How about neutral pitches?

Fast past: Anderson was fearsome during the 2010/11 series that England claimed in Australia. Credit:Quentin Jones Michael Vaughan has proposed that English curators be directed to prepare drier, harder wickets to simulate Australian conditions and stimulate faster bowling. Aside from the potential absurdity of this race – Australia meanwhile producing green seaming conditions to match England, only to find hard brown strips when they get there, natch! – not only is it not going to happen, as nobody would willingly give up their own advantage, but it would not matter anyway. Neutral umpires, neutral balls, neutral wickets – all rest on the fallacy that cricket is a game that, like snooker or Minecraft, can somehow be neutralised, stripped of the mysteries of external conditions. Cricket teams have been getting more scientific and more professional in their preparation for foreign conditions, but they continue to lose. Why is that? Perhaps the most decisive factor is what Tolstoy meant in War and Peace when he wrote "kings are the slaves of history".

It takes him a thousand-odd pages to get there, but the short version is that planners and "controllers" of events are marginal actors; what decides battles is a communal animating spirit, an invisible will to win, which rises most strongly in those who are defending their turf. Desire wins wars. (Tolstoy was depicting the home-team victory of Russia over France, but could have been writing about Vietnam, Afghanistan or anywhere in the post-colonial world.) No matter how much you watch cricket, it is still startling how the primal force of home lifts individuals to their best. This was most stark in 2013 and 2014, when England bullied Australia in England, and then, a few weeks later in Australia, those same pusillanimous Australians stood over and beat down those same strutting Englishmen. It's very basic, it's testosterone-filled, it's hard to define, it's not very cultured or guided by intellect, but you can see it on the field. It's an animal thing.

It's why away teams drop half-chances and home teams hold them. It's why twists of bad luck have a more lasting impact on the morale of touring teams. It's why the three matches we have seen, poised evenly for three or four days, have imploded in Australia's favour. Home is where the heart is: Home sides benefit from primal instincts involved with defending their turf. Credit:AAP These players are not robots, but are creatures of flesh and blood who operate on primal instinct, a key part of which is to defend their home patch. The parts of cricket which are animal mysteries are as fascinating as those parts which appeal to the brain, but they don't get as much coverage, because we all talk too much and usually about the wrong things. The things that matter are often beyond language. Tinkering with the format, the conditions and so on miss the point, by shifting responsibility for change away from the competitors on the field. It can only be the players' efforts that change events.

This England team was talented enough to win here. They haven't lost because of umpires, balls or pitches. They haven't lost because they were facing one of the great Australian teams. They lost the Ashes because their best player lost the plot in Bristol, because Alastair Cook and Joe Root have batted poorly, because they have bowled too short, and, if you want a unifying factor to knit all this together, they lost because they submitted to the hosts' domineering spirit. Two dogs had a fight and the one that was defending its home patch chased the invader away. Look outside. Happens all the time. Ashes tourists will win again when they are good enough. But it will be a rare thing, as it should be. The dull years of Ashes cricket were when England were losing at home, and had little chance away. Who wants to watch the current West Indies? Home turf should be a stronghold, for it shows the spirit of cricket is strong in that country.

This wasn't the case in England for a while, but it is now, and England will be hard to beat in 2019. And that's a good thing. Somewhat confused with the Ashes panic is the whitewash panic. Are five Test matches really necessary? The Ashes whitewash used to be rarer than a Tied Test, and the one that had suffered that indignity, Johnny Douglas's 1920/21 team, had been weakened by four years of war. Until the end: Australian captain Steve Smith has indicated his side won't be taking the foot off the pedal. Credit:Paul Jeffers Whitewashes are more common because the bar has been raised. Since the champion Australian team of 2006/07 did it, lesser teams in 2013/14 and this year have set themselves a pass mark of not just winning the series but whitewashing it. They are not satisfied yet. And also, the bar has been raised. Some winning teams of the past would have been on the turps by now and, subconsciously at least, easing up. Dead rubbers used to have a levelling effect, but today's professionalism and healthier living can lead to a widening of the difference.

But predictable? Only in hindsight. The three Test matches so far have provided a tense, competitive spectacle. In Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, England were in the fight until single turning points that were neither predictable nor inevitable unless you have the clairvoyance of a Ricky Ponting or a Glenn McGrath. Everyone else falls into line, saying they knew this was going to happen. But they didn't know, and they won't next time. Loading Australia will visit England in 2019 as Ashes holders, but because they will be away from home, they will go as the challengers, the underdogs, trying to achieve what no Australians have achieved since 2001.

England will be favourites. The very difficulty of winning away is what will give that series its meaning. That doesn't sound like a problem in need of a fix.