In the week since Boxing Day we've had the predictable acres of newsprint and miles of column inches as the media pundits ponder the imponderables and most of it has been rather predictable.

England, we're told, are on a mission to crush Australia.

Colour me substantially less than amazed, given the amount they've copped over the years, the chance to even the ledger, and the fact that having possibly destroyed Ponting's captaincy they can inflict significant pain on the likely contenders for 2013.

Given the circumstances the question of the captaincy got the sort of attention you'd have expected. Ponting plans to be back asap, Clarke is only too aware of his caretaker status, and everything else is more or less as you'd expect.

Reading those comments, on the other hand, I suspected a certain amount of back-covering if Ponting does make it back to the leader's role. He's not, by all accounts, a man to get offside.

The selection of Khawaja as his replacement got the attention you'd expect it to attract along the lines you'd expect it to follow. Nothing surprising in the selection or the reaction. The same thing applies to Michael Clarke.

With Ponting injured, the vice captain's the obvious successor, and the Mr 15 Percent headlines are hardly surprising given a man out of form with the bat, with a long term back injury that may or may not be the result of overexertion in the old horizontal mambo, and enjoys a celebrity lifestyle in substantial contrast to his suburban roots. Very few of the comment out there in the non-cricket specific media seem to have noted that the celebrity lifestyle came out of the cricket rather than the other way around.

So, nothing too surprising, and, in any case it's now a matter of seeing how all the theory and prognostication shakes out in practice.

In many ways the result of this Test is less important than the way the said result is achieved.

A loss wouldn't necessarily be a total disaster, given the way the series has unfolded, provided it's not an innings defeat.

A win wouldn't necessarily signal the dawning of a new era, and a draw, provided it's not weather induced would be a rather handy result, given the fact that it would be a fairly high scoring affair where England would presumably have failed to bowl us out twice.

Most of the interest that comes out of the result will concern the way things go from here, and you can probably look at the implications for the future in three categories.

There are the old stagers, long established players including Ponting, Clarke, Hussey, Haddin and Katich.

Then there are the blokes who've been around for a while (Watson, Johnson, Siddle, Hilfenhaus, Harris, North and Hauritz) and the tyros (Hughes, Khawaja, Smith and Beer).

With Ponting it's a question of when he gets back and what happens when he does. If he's not back for the World Cup, you'd expect him to be looking to get back for Sri Lanka, but that's something that'll be shaped by events behind the scenes, so it's pointless speculating. If he's back for the World Cup, it's a matter of what happens over there.

In any case, if he's back I doubt he'll be back for long as far as the captaincy's concerned.

The biggest issue with the old stagers, apart from how long they're staying, will be how they fit into the new picture, so while Clarke, Hussey and Haddin all look safe is the medium term, their roles may well change.

Clarke's move to Four hasn't been a success, and concerns with youngsters coming through could prompt an attempt to convert Hussey into an opener if Ponting decided to stick around and could be persuaded to bat down the order. Haddin, given concerns over injuries and glove work, could arguably play as a specialist bat with Tim Paine taking the gloves.

When you come to the next bracket of players, Watson's the only one who looks safe in the medium to long term, though I'd like to see him at Three or Four.

Johnson may be on the verge of his use by date, and his fate will, I suspect, be intertwined with Ponting's captaincy and how much influence Ponting exercises at the selection table. Siddle and Hilfenhaus look reasonable medium term prospects, though possibly not in the same side.

Siddle looks the more adaptable workhorse, though Hilfenhaus might be a better prospect when swing comes into the equation. Harris is another in the same mould, but there's always going to be a question mark over his fitness.

Hauritz and North may not be out of the picture yet, but with Hauritz it's a case of whether Ponting stays as skipper, and if North can transmute potential and undoubted ability into form through weight of runs he may well be back in some shape or form. But most interest will, predictably, centre around the youngsters.

The jury is still out on Hughes and Smith, though you'd expect both to have a role to play in the long term (not necessarily in the Test side in both cases) and with Khawaja and Beer it's a case of wait and see.

In any case you’d hope that the four of them will benefit from the experience and the three New South Welshmen are long term prospects, so a return to the Shield to work on issues that have been identified under the arc lights will work out the way they did for Steve Waugh, Matthew Hayden, Damien Martyn and Justin Langer.

There's nothing earth shatteringly new in those remarks, of course, but tapping them out on the iPad has filled in an hour or so while I wait for the power to come back on after a significant outage across Bowen.