An hour after England had completed their expected victory in the second Test, there was the rather charming sight of several of the team playing cricket on a sunny Basin Reserve outfield with their small children.

The team have had their families with them this past week and the corridors of the team hotel have echoed to the sound of little Vaughans, Strausses and Hoggards. This is fair enough. Some of these players have been on the road a lot lately.

Later this week in Napier, England will play their 23rd and final overseas international since September, a programme that has taken in a Twenty20 tournament in South Africa, and one-day and Test series in Sri Lanka and New Zealand.

A great deal will depend on the result in Napier as to how the winter as a whole is perceived. If England win, they will return to a minor fanfare and optimistic talk of a bright future. Should they lose, the predictions will be bleak; the next Ashes, you can be sure, will be as good as lost.

Even a draw - of which there is a good chance as the Napier pitch is traditionally flat and filled with runs - would not be greeted fondly as England, not without reason, were expected to win this series. So far, all England have won is a one-day series in Sri Lanka and a Twenty20 series in New Zealand.

But results are one thing, runes another, and reading the runes of this winter is now the priority, because what they may well tell us is that what we are witnessing is a handing over of one generation to the next.

It is the men with the new faces, untainted by the catastrophe in Australia last winter, who have enhanced their reputations ... Ryan Sidebottom, Stuart Broad and Tim Ambrose to name but three. Of the famed Ashes winners of 2005, life has been less rich.

There has been little joy for Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Strauss, Matthew Hoggard or Steve Harmison. Hoggard and Harmison are ending the winter outside the XI and have just watched James Anderson and Broad bowl England to victory with control and skill. Hoggy and Harmy may be back, but they may not. Napier may tell us that.

Strauss and Pietersen are anxious for one big score before they go home. Pietersen, of course, will be back. He's a champion whose creative juices have not been stirred by two relatively low-key tours.

One suspects he won't have any trouble getting himself up for the South Africans this summer. But Strauss cannot afford another quiet match.

His future is on the line.

Michael Vaughan needed this win in Wellington to remind everyone of his record as England's most successful Test captain, but one suspects that he knows the clock is ticking. One senior player whose stock has risen is Paul Collingwood, the one-day captain. One errant night in Cape Town apart, he has shown that responsibility only improves his game.

If this winter has hinted at anything, it is that split captaincies is not doing much for overall cohesion. Against the odds, Collingwood is still a coming man.

So, the theory may be that if you have been pushing a pram here, your best days could be behind you. If you are still applying hair gel rather than nappy cream, it may be that the future is yours.