What happened immediately following England’s last three Ashes drubbings?

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England’s test team is back in the win column after their disastrous Ashes Series Down Under at the start of the year. Brendan McCullum’s men were unceremoniouslydispatched in the land of their greatest rivals, Australia, earlier this year, losing 4-1 after thumping defeats in Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Sydney. However, they did manage to get their first win on Aussie soil in 15 years in the fourth test in Melbourne, and it seems as though they have built upon that in their return home.

They faced a highly rated New Zealand at Lord’s in their first test since their humbling Ashes defeat, and they immediately looked like a team capable of competing with the very best. Gus Atkinson was running in hard, Ollie Robinson was probing the outside edge, and Josh Tongue was making the ball do things batsmen can’t account for. The

Kiwis were dismantled by 115 runs, and England were back to winning convincingly.

With two tests remaining in the series, online betting sites now make England the overwhelming favourites to build on their victory and go on to claim the series win. The latest odds from Lucky Rebel Sportsbook make the hosts a mightily short 4/25 shot to claim the series, with the visitors way out at 6/1. But the question every press box occupant is now quietly asking themselves is whether this is relief, or the genuine turning of a corner.

England have been here before — three times, to be specific, they have had to rebuild following a humiliation Down Under — and the immediate series after an Ashes drubbing has a way of revealing far more about a side’s true condition than the drubbing itself. Three previous disasters. Three very different stories about what came next.

Mitchell Johnson’s relentless pace attack reduced England’s batting line-up to rubble across five Tests back in 2013/14. Then, three weeks after the final wicket fell to complete a 5-0 whitewash, the ECB cancelled Kevin Pietersen’s central contract. England’s all-time leading run-scorer across all formats. Gone, in an act of institutional self-destruction that told you everything about how panicked the corridors of power had become. Andy Flower went with him, and Alastair Cook somehow clung to the captaincy anyway.

Sri Lanka arrived quietly dangerous under Angelo Mathews. England, under a regime that already felt provisional, was supposed to handle them comfortably. They didn’t.

The first Test at Lord’s produced an agonizing draw, with the hosts unable to bowl the visitors out on the final day, Sri Lanka fighting tooth and nail to keep their final wicket intact and escape with a draw. Then Headingley. Moeen Ali scored an unbeaten 108 in just his second test, but it wasn’t enough. Shaminda Eranga found Jimmy Anderson’s edge with the penultimate ball of the innings, handing the visitors a famous 100-run win and rubber-stamping the fact that England had much more rebuilding to do.

Steve Smith batted England into submission in the 2017/18 Ashes series. His 687 series runs left England’s attack perpetually frustrated, their plans rendered threadbare by his eccentric brilliance, despite bright spots such as Dawid Malan’s maiden Test century at the WACA. Root was prolific without converting starts; Cook struggled badly; the attack, shorn of Ben Stokes following the Bristol nightclub incident, looked repeatedly overmatched.

England’s second consecutive 4-0 overseas defeat — following the India hammering of

2016-17 — had delivered a verdict that was difficult to ignore. And yet the ECB chose to do exactly that.

Root kept the captaincy. Trevor Bayliss remained as coach. There was no overhaul, no reset, no interrogation of what had gone so comprehensively wrong. England pressed on immediately to New Zealand for a two-Test series that everyone understood was damage limitation. No structural change, the same management in place, and a team in urgent need of something — anything — to salvage their winter.

They found nothing. In the inaugural day-night Test in Auckland, England were bowled out for 58 in 20.4 overs — Trent Boult taking 6/32 and Tim Southee 4/25, five batsmen making ducks as the pink ball swung viciously under the lights. New Zealand won by an innings and 49 runs. In the second Test at Christchurch, England came agonizingly close to leveling before Neil Wagner’s 103-ball rearguard and Ish Sodhi’s 168-ball resistance left the tourists two wickets short. The winter ended without a Test series win in nine overseas attempts.

Travis Head claimed the Compton-Miller medal in 2021/22 after announcing himself to the world as a genuine superstar with a century on the opening day at the Gabba. Root toiled heroically for 322 runs without the support that might have turned his brilliance into victories. Malan finished with 244, Stokes 236. The bowling was pedestrian throughout. England collapsed to lose 10 wickets for 78 runs in Hobart to surrender the series 4-0, the draw at the SCG the single moment of genuine fortitude across the entire winter.

Ashley Giles, Chris Silverwood, and eventually Joe Root all lost their positions in the aftermath of yet another mauling Down Under, with Paul Collingwood taking interim charge for the West Indies tour. James Anderson and Stuart Broad were axed for the first Test; Rory Burns and Haseeb Hameed — culprits at the top of the order all winter — were discarded. Root captained England in the Caribbean before stepping down. What came next was, structurally, the most honest response English cricket had produced in nearly a decade.

West Indies won the third and decisive Test in Grenada by ten wickets to claim the Caribbean series 1-0. Kemar Roach and Jayden Seales shared 11 wickets, and Kraigg Brathwaite starred with 341 runs across the series after the first two Tests ended in disciplined but inconclusive draws.