The brief and glorious time when England had possession of the Ashes has taken a mere two weeks to become a sepia-tinted golden age. A thumping in Brisbane and an infinitely more damaging defeat in Adelaide have brought England to the verge of Tufnell territory, in which hangdog humour, a drink and a fag offer the only means of self-preservation.

You cannot imagine Duncan Fletcher’s England resorting to such obvious escapism any more than you can imagine Fletcher picking a renegade of Phil Tufnell’s class in the first place. If Monty Panesar cannot get a game, then what chance would the eccentrically gifted left-arm spinner and confirmed No 11, Tufnell, have had of making an Ashes team. Different era, same dilemma.

This was Tufnell on the eve of the tour. “They can’t play Giles, can they? He’s a good pro and a good bowler, but he’s just come back from injury. You can’t just say: ‘Oh, I’ve just had a hip op — that’s not a form of music, by the way — and I haven’t bowled a ball in five months, so here’s Ricky Ponting and it’s a Test match’. I do think that will send a message. I mean, crikey. Monty’s had a fantastic summer, he’s bowled out some great players, Inzy, Younis Khan, got 32 wickets and they don’t know anything about him. And you’re not playing him. He must play, must play.”

Not for the first time in his life, Tuffers hit the nail firmly on the head. His thumbs might have suffered along the way, but he talks cricket with more sense than many presume, and it’s possible that in his recent lunchtime show on Channel Nine in Australia he has analysed England’s failings with an equally acute eye, for all the mockney vowels. Brisbane, he accepts now, might have been a lost cause for Panesar, the most naturally talented left-arm spinner since, well, Tufnell himself, but Adelaide, crikey. Surely they had to play him in Adelaide.

“You’ve got to take wickets in Test cricket and we’ve not done that, have we?” he says. “Gawd knows how many thousands of runs they’ve scored now. I still think he should have played in Brisbane, but for certain reasons, he didn’t and hindsight’s a wonderful thing. But he definitely should have played in Adelaide, where spinners come into the game on the last couple of days.”

Back to the first Test in Brisbane in November 1994 and Tufnell’s second innings figures read: 38-10-79-4 (Taylor, Boon and the Waugh brothers). In Adelaide he removed Mark Waugh again as England won by 106 runs to recover a vestige of pride and take the series, if not the destiny of the Ashes, into the last Test in Perth.

You wonder how much subliminal influence Tufnell has had on the suspicion with which Panesar is clearly viewed by his captain and his coach. Tufnell became the butt of the barrackers, the shambling symbol of England’s incompetence Down Under. They knew he could bowl, all right, but his fielding was a laughing stock and his mind brittle as a twig. Panesar’s fielding has betrayed some Tufnell-like qualities and nobody knew how he would cope with Australia’s robust welcome.

Before Tufnell came Phil Edmonds, another man with a mind of his own. Edmonds had an idiosyncratic style and an almost irrational self-confidence which allowed him to presume that every ball he bowled was destined to pitch middle-and-leg and hit off stump. Like Tufnell, Edmonds could be a top-class spinner on his day, but, like Tufnell, his days were not always obvious or ideally chosen.

England captains such as Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting harboured a distinct prejudice against spinners, a fault that has persisted through the tenure of Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain and has lodged firmly in the mind of Andrew Flintoff. Put simply, none of them believed that spinners won Test matches. But then, over this past fortnight, with the possible exception of the gallant Matthew Hoggard, none of the other bowlers have threatened to either.

“I haven’t seen a decent spell of bowling from both ends for any length of time,” Tufnell says. “We’ve never had them under the cosh in the way we did the last time. I detected a bit of caution by the Aussies in the reaction to the victory in Brisbane. There was no ‘Here we go, 5-0 whitewash’. But after Adelaide, they’ll be all over you.”

Tufnell should know. By the time the team had reached the last stop of the 1994-95 tour in Perth, his private life was in such turmoil that he started to butt the wall of his hotel room and then checked himself into a psychiatric ward at the local hospital. He was due to be detained overnight for observation, but the very fact that he had admitted to the problem seemed to form at least part of the solution. He discharged himself and returned to the team hotel. He did not play in the concluding Test, which was to his good fortune: England lost by 329 runs. Tufnell understands well enough the pressures exerted on a losing team Down Under.

“Playing for England certainly cost me a couple of marriages,” he reflects. “It was, ‘See you in March, luv’ and that was it. Would it have helped to have a couple of winters off? Nah, not for me. I was better buggered off, to be honest. I used to look forward to my paid holidays with England, know what I mean. ‘Crikey, I’m a cricketer, get me out of here’. Touring was great, five-star all round the world with your mates.”

Atherton recently wrote that only two types of Englishman were treated with respect in Australia — the very English, naturally talented extroverts such as David Gower and Ian Botham, and the cussed, dour, silent grumps like Douglas Jardine, Mike Brearley and presumably Atherton himself. Into the former camp he put Flintoff, into the latter Fletcher. But Tuffers has formed a category of his own, the guy who could take a bit and give a bit back and was always true to himself, win or, more often, lose.