In cricket, as in politics, the lessons of history are seldom if ever learnt. It is little use now to study England’s last whitewash in Australia, the ill-fated tour of 1920-21, to find the reasons for the whitewash of 2006. Some of the same weaknesses were exposed in both tours; the wrong captain, the weak bowling, the long tail, but it is too late to remedy them after the tour is over. We need to look not at the failures but at the subsequent recovery of English cricket in the 1920s. We know how England got it wrong, It is better now to ask: how can England get it right?

In particular we should look at the series of greatest recovery, the second tour after the whitewash of 1921, when England won in Australia by four matches to one. The overseas tours, whether by England or Australia, are the competitions that really count. No side should regard itself as having won the Ashes unless it has won a home series and an overseas series in succession. The home advantage will always be decisive when the teams are more or less evenly matched.

I can have no direct memories of the 1928-29 tour which began in the year that I was born. But I do have an indirect memory. The leading England heroes of that tour were both West Country men, J. C. (Farmer) White, the Somerset slow bowler, and W. R (Wally) Hammond, the great Gloucestershire batsman.

In 1937 my father took his family to watch the West Country derby between Gloucestershire and Somerset on the Bristol ground. This match was always played on the Bank Holiday weekend at the beginning of August. My father was a member of the Somerset club, so we were able to sit as guest members in the pavilion at Bristol. We had a seat in the stalls.

This was, I think, “Farmer” White’s last match; he had become rather slow in the field; he was, by then, 46 years old. He still bowled an impeccable length, as he had always done, but he did not take a wicket. It is Hammond that I really remember. He scored one of his magisterial centuries, completely dominating the Somerset bowling, including White’s. I remember particularly his forcing shots off the back foot, which went past extra cover as fast as if he had been driving off the front foot. Like most great all-rounders, he was a very strong man.

Statistics can tell only a part of the story, but both Hammond and White produced quite extraordinary statistical results in the 1928 Test series. Perhaps Hammond can best be compared with the young Don Bradman, who entered the Australian side during the tour, and was to be the master of Test cricket for the next 20 years. In this series Hammond scored 905 runs at an average of 113; Bradman scored 468 runs for an average of 67. Hammond had a five-year advantage in age — Bradman was only 20 — but Hammond dominated that series in the way Bradman was to dominate many subsequent series.

The fourth Test at Adelaide was a narrow victory for England by 12 runs; England had already won the first three Tests by margins of 675 runs, eight wickets and three wickets. The series got closer as it went on, and Australia avoided a whitewash by winning the final Test.

It was White who won the Adelaide Test for England by an exceptional performance of accuracy and endurance, one of the outstanding performances by any slow bowler. He was a left-arm bowler, although he batted right handed, not spinning the ball very much, but beating the batsmen by subtle variations of flight and pace. In the two innings at Adelaide he bowled 124.5 overs, of which 37 were maidens, for 256 runs and 13 wickets. Hammond did more than help the England score along; he scored 119 in the first innings and 177 in the second. Bradman’s scores were comparatively modest; 40 in the first innings and 58 in the second. White’s performance was no fluke; despite the intervention of the First World War, he took 100 wickets a season in first-class cricket in no fewer than 14 seasons. There are conclusions to be drawn from the contrast between England’s whitewash in 1921 and the 4-1 victory over a strong Australian side in 1929. The first is captaincy. In 1920-21, the captain was an all-rounder, J. W. H. T. Douglas, known as “Johnny Won’t Hit Today”. As a batsman he performed very respectably, scoring 354 runs in the five Tests for an average of 39; as a bowler he was expensive, taking eight wickets for 420 runs; as a captain he was a failure.

In 1928-29, England’s captain was A. P. F. Chapman, arguably England’s best captain between the wars, who at one point had won nine Test matches in succession. The same side will win matches under one captain and lose them under another. It is a mistake to appoint a leading all-rounder as captain of a Test team; very few men can carry the triple burden of leading the bowling, leading the batting and leading the side. Even Ian Bo tham could not do it, nor can Andrew Flintoff.

In 1928 England’s tail was almost as effective as the top end of the order, though a side whose batting opened with Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe, with Hammond coming in first wicket down, could expect to get away to a good start. In their first three innings the lower-order batsmen, from the fall of the fifth wicket onwards, scored 304, 114 before a declaration and 295.

Michael Vaughan is coming back and — subject to his fitness — the question of the England captaincy is settled. The question of England’s bowling is not. In 1928, seven years after the last whitewash, England took Larwood, Tate, White, Geary and Hammond to Australia. Will we have such an army of first-class bowlers when England returns to Australia? England want to beat the Australians, preferably in Australia, and we need bowlers who can take Australian wickets.

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