Open the curtains. The circles on the surface of the canal give the game away immediately. Little compact discs of doom. There’s a group of lads outside the hotel, one of them ordering an Uber, one of them checking a weather app, one of them refreshing the BBC live blog. Eleven o’clock inspection, says one. Might clear up by 12, says another. Ahmed’s coming in four minutes, says another.

By the time they reach the ground they will know that the 11am inspection has been delayed, and so begins the slow fade. The person operating the big screen starts having a little fun. “Please stay hydrated.” “Water fountains are located around the concourse.” “Join The Cloud wifi network.” A game of plastic cricket breaks out by the burrito stand. A kneeling Brendon McCullum gives slip catching practice, trying for all the world not to look like a man getting his trousers soaked.

Splish, splosh, drip, drop, and thus do the Ashes leak away for another three years. Inspection at 12.15pm. Early lunch taken. Play to start at 1pm if no further rain. It rains. There are more than 20,000 people to watch some Ashes cricket in Manchester, and somehow the longer they wait the further into the distance it recedes. First 1pm, then maybe 2pm, and then the dawning realisation that it won’t be until 2031.

Cricket has a brutal way of making you feel the passing of time. Long nights spent in hotel rooms, long days spent huddling by concession stands, blowing on hot lattes, slowly getting older. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. They’re now showing highlights of 2005 on the big screen. Shane Warne ripping it out of the rough, Andrew Strauss raising his bat in celebration, a beaming Ruth applauding from the stands. The glow of youth and a hot sun. Where did the time go?

Then you remember that this was another Ashes series that probably would have gone the opposite way had it not been for the weather. Australia taking the field in sunglasses, England fans raising their umbrellas. England were about half an hour from being rained out at Adelaide in 2010-11, from which point they probably go into the fourth Test 1-0 down. Then you have Old Trafford in 2013, England 37 for three chasing 332 when the clouds open. The point being: these things happen. Over a long enough timeframe, the arc of English cricket eventually bends towards rain.

Of course it is possible to begrudge the Australians their triumph, a triumph earned not by superior skill with bat or ball, but via hydrology, the random splodges of a weather radar. Australia win by two wickets; Australia win by 43 runs; Australia win by three inches of water. Pat Cummins, climate warrior, the climate has come to your aid at last. By the same token it is easy to curse England for those squandered missed opportunities earlier in the series: the hubristic first-day declaration at Edgbaston, the way they collapsed from 279 for four to 325 all out in the first innings at Lord’s, so many dropped catches, so many wretched dismissals.

But in truth both responses feel equally churlish, for this is ultimately a series that has given us so much: unforgettable memories, unthinkable drama, a rich tapestry of human flaws and superhuman resilience. Australia have retained the Ashes because they put in two brilliant, nerveless performances at Edgbaston and Lord’s, because they managed to carve out first-innings runs, because their tactics were smart and they managed to break the big partnerships. Even before the deluge here, they still had to bat out 71 overs under the highest pressure, where a lesser team would have subsided.

Ben Stokes signs autographs for patient fans after the fourth Ashes Test was abandoned. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

England, for their part, came close to pulling off one of the most outlandish heists in the history of Ashes cricket. They learned from their mistakes, refused to submit to introspection or despondency, pushed their bodies to the limit and beyond. Ninety minutes of clear weather was all that separated them from a showdown in south London, a Test match that would have been one of the most electrifyingly stirring sporting occasions to have taken place in this country since the London Olympics. That it will not come to pass should be a matter of sadness, not condemnation.

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So the team that never draws finally drew. The team that believes it can seize victory from any point on the map finally faces a scenario where it can no longer win. The team committed to entertain and thrill is forced to shake hands on a day of the most unremitting grimness, surrounded by empty seats. Not that everyone has left: perhaps the most uplifting sight of the day is the father and son perched all day at the very top of the temporary stand, 80 rows into the sky, umbrella shaking perilously in the wind, boundlessly hopeful to the very last.

But eventually they give up hope and clamber down the slippery steps. The coffee queues slowly empty. One of the greatest modern Ashes series ends in a splash of puddles. The Test match that could have been now exists in the imagination alone: Mark Wood steaming in to Mitchell Marsh, the swell of noise, the crash of stumps, the sweet smell of two apiece. But cricket doesn’t always give you want you want, and the same – I guess – is true of life as well.