Hard to say if England cricket is near a new era

Performance in home series against India will determine whether it is time for a personnel shake-up, writes Osman Samiuddin.

The core of England’s team, which includes Alastair Cook, left, fared poorly in the Ashes. Gareth Copley / Getty Images

In so many ways, this Ashes campaign resembles the many England played against Australia through the 1990s and early 2000s. They have been brutalised on the field, and that is being polite about what Australia have done to them.

Off the field, casualties have been high. Their rock at No 3 has left, and he might never come back. Their leading spinner has upped and retired with two Tests still to go.

Their management of the squad is suddenly under fire: too controlled, too joyless – precisely the factors for their success until now. The selection policy is being picked apart: why take so many tall fast bowlers, all with good bounce, only to not play any of them at Perth?

They are one Tiger Moth joyride away from a complete meltdown. (To recap: in 1990/91, during a side game against Queensland, David Gower and John Morris chose to fly a Tiger Moth plane low over the stadium instead of being at the game itself, an incident that embodied the indiscipline of a poor Ashes tour.)

The only way this could be a greater tribute to that time is if England do well in the dead-rubber Tests. These Tests were what defined the Ashes power equation through that period. Australia would win the urn in the least number of days possible before England snuck in a result.

In 1993, England won the sixth and final Test at 4-0 down. The following trip to Australia, England won the fourth Test to be 2-1 down with a chance to at least level the series (they did not), but the Ashes were already lost.

In 1997, England won the sixth Test at The Oval, giving a lost series some scoreline respectability. In 1998/99, the Ashes could not be won when England won the fourth Test to be 2-1 down. In 2001, England won the fourth Test when 3-0 down, and in 2002/03 they won the last Test, having lost the first four.

Until 2005, this pattern was set in stone. Did England play with more freedom once the series was gone, or did Australia relax once it was secured? For a great side famous for their ruthlessness, Australia had an inexplicable tendency to lose these dead-rubber Ashes Tests.

The thing about these games is that they can be illusory. Often, winning the last Test leaves behind a false aftertaste of hope, even positivity. When Michael Atherton took over from Graham Gooch during the 1993 Ashes, with two Tests to go but the series gone, England responded immediately.

A new era, finally, seemed on the cusp. It was not to be; Atherton, earnest and spirited as his efforts were, could not cure England’s malaise. More recently, outside the Ashes, was the love-in created in the immediate aftermath of dead-rubber triumph over South Africa in 2008.

That was Kevin Pietersen’s first Test as captain after Michael Vaughan stepped away. Matters looked rosy then, but they turned very bad very quickly.

England look so comprehensively decimated right now it is difficult to imagine what they could possibly take from the final two Tests, even if they win both. Every place in the XI, bar very few, is under scrutiny.

The consolation, ironically, lies in this era of international cricket that England have tried and failed to conquer. The implications of results have been fuzzied constantly. More than for many generations, it matters greatly whether a side is playing at home or away.

South Africa are probably the only current side reasonably confident about getting a result away from home, and even their home form is not impeccable.

Cricket’s order is still shaking itself up to settle on a truly dominant team.

A further, essential marker of Australia’s progress will come in South Africa next. A truer gauge of the decline of England may be apparent in their next big home series against India.

Seminal as this result may look right now, it could, in coming months, be as useful a guide as Australia’s fortunes just six months ago, when they lost the Ashes 3-0 in England.