The secrets to winning the Ashes Down Under - revealed by the only men who know how: The one key feature every successful England team had, the true value of warm-up matches, Ian Botham's heroic speech and how to 'provoke' the Aussies

‘We wanted to hit the ground running,’ says Andrew Strauss. Mike Gatting advises: ‘If you get on top, stay on top.’ For Mike Brearley, it was crucial to ‘seize your moment’.

The wisdom sounds simple, but its application is not. Every four years England visit Australia, yet these three – all Middlesex batsmen, as it happens – are the only men alive who have captained them to victory.

Others have enjoyed success too, though they are fading in the memory. Ray Illingworth, who presided over a 2–0 win in 1970-71, died four years ago. His fellow Yorkshireman Len Hutton, in charge for the 3–1 triumph of 1954-55, only ever appears in sepia. Before that, you have to go back before the Second World War, to Douglas Jardine and his 1932-33 Bodyliners. These names are on a pedestal, and Ben Stokes intends to join them.

The circumstances of the wins under Strauss in 2010-11, Gatting in 1986-87 and Brearley in 1978-79 were all different, but if Stokes is looking for a common thread, he could do worse than emphasise the importance of starting well. After all, only twice in history – under Hutton and, 43 years earlier, under Johnny Douglas – have England won in Australia after losing the first Test.

‘One of the things we really focused on was the danger of sleep-walking your way into another Ashes,’ Strauss tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘Probably 12 or 18 months out, we started our planning, and that included speaking to a load of people we thought might have relevant information – past England captains and those based in Australia.

‘What became apparent was that there’s a real need out there to have a very tough, resilient team. It’s a harsh, hard environment. When things start going wrong, it can be very difficult to shift the momentum. So we started thinking, "How can we push ourselves a bit harder and go through a tough shared experience?"’

Strauss and coach Andy Flower settled on a boot camp in the forests of Bavaria, where activities included boxing. Responses varied: Chris Tremlett broke Jimmy Anderson’s rib, while Monty Panesar, according to Steven Finn, ‘went limp and didn’t throw a single punch’.

England then treated their three red-ball warm-up matches, against Western Australia, South Australia and Australia A, as what Strauss calls a ‘mini-series in its own right’, winning two and drawing one. By the first Test at Brisbane’s Gabba, they felt ready, and responded to a first-innings deficit of 221 by racking up 517 for one, with centuries for Strauss and Jonathan Trott, and a double hundred for Alastair Cook.

‘It made a big statement,’ says Strauss. ‘Most England teams had gone to Brisbane and lost heavily, which sets the tone for what’s to come. We bucked that trend.’ Incredibly, England won three of the next four Tests by an innings.

Gatting’s team were less of a well-oiled machine by the time they got to the Gabba. Their warm-up performances had been so poor that Martin Johnson of The Independent famously suggested they had only three problems: they couldn’t bat, bowl or field.

The day before the first Test, pep talks by Gatting and tour manager Micky Stewart were followed by an unusually brief contribution from Ian Botham, habitual slayer of Australia.

Gatting recalls: ‘Normally, he’d just say, “We’ll bounce him out, I’ll do this, I’ll do that”. But he got up said: “Look, we’ve just had practice matches. And that’s the word: practice. We’re ready to play tomorrow. Whichever XI goes out there, we’ve got a chance of winning." And then he sat down, which was quite amazing for Beefy.’

The rest was history. Allan Border saved Gatting a tricky decision at the toss by choosing to bowl, Botham hammered 138, the last of his 14 Test hundreds, and England – ridiculed by all and sundry – won by seven wickets en route to a 2–1 triumph. ‘Sometimes a batsman has a hex over a bowler, but he seemed to have a hex over every Australian,’ says Gatting.

For Brearley, whose side also began with a seven-wicket win at Brisbane, thanks to Derek Randall’s double of 75 and 74 not out, there had been another telling dressing-room intervention which hinted at the camaraderie every visiting team needs Down Under.

It came during the fourth Test at Sydney, after Australia had closed the gap to 2–1 and were threatening a big first-innings lead following England’s capitulation for 152. And it was delivered by the Derbyshire seamer Mike Hendrick, one of the tour’s unsung heroes. 

According to Brearley, ‘Hendo just said, “You’ve got to get people together. We’re losing it. You’ve got to talk to them”. Between us, we decided I would talk at the beginning of every session, which we did for the rest of the tour.'

A brilliant 150 from Randall turned the Sydney Test on its head, and England ended up celebrating a 5–1 win – still the most victories by an away side in any Ashes series.

They had demonstrated a quality that, above all, Brearley believes is priceless in Australia. ‘Resilience seems to me to be so important,’ he says. ‘Whatever somebody throws at you, by way of fast bowling or words, you knew it was for earnest in Australia.

‘There was something about the culture of their cricket. It was combative, and there wasn’t much humour. I once remember Arkle (Derek Randall) fooling around as he scratched his mark and saying to Rodney Marsh, Australia’s wicketkeeper: “Eh oop, Marshy! How are we going?” Marsh replied: “What do you think this is, Randall? A f***ing garden party?”’

Perhaps unexpectedly, Strauss, Gatting and Brearley all ended up grateful for the spin bowling at their disposal. Strauss had Graeme Swann, whose five-for bowled England to victory at Adelaide, and Gatting had his Middlesex team-mates John Emburey and Phil Edmonds, who took 33 wickets between them.

Brearley had Emburey, too, as well as the future chairman of selectors Geoff Miller, who topped the averages with 23 wickets at 15, undermining the long-held argument that finger spinners are useless in Australia. Whether Stokes seeks to prove otherwise with Shoaib Bashir remains to be seen.

Above all, perhaps, Brearley had his own fertile mind, which came up with a ruse of packing the leg side with seven fielders for the off-breaks of Emburey and Miller as England set about defending 205 in that pivotal fourth Test.

‘I think they were provoked by the field,’ he says. ‘They thought it was a defensive move, but we were pitching the ball just outside off to hit the stumps, so you could get out if you tried to hit it through the off side. To hit it to leg, where there were lots of fielders, you had to fetch it a bit. It wasn’t defensive at all, but I knew they would think of it as such.’

Sure enough, Emburey and Miller took seven for 84 between them, and Australia tumbled to 111 all out.

Having a game plan and sticking to it is key. Strauss decided to ‘suffocate’ Australia’s batsmen by building up pressure, which is why England dropped Finn after three Tests, even though he was their leading wicket-taker at that stage of the series.

It looked ruthless, but Finn was going at 4.3 an over, and Strauss wanted control. In came Tim Bresnan, who went at 2.6 and picked up 11 wickets at 19.

‘Be clear about how you’re trying to win,’ says Strauss, ‘and select the best 11 players according to that.’

As he speaks, he is reminded of the stick Stokes’s team have received for their lack of proper warm-up matches – a stark contrast to his own strategy 15 years ago.

‘If they feel that’s the best way of them winning this series, they need to absolutely commit to it,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter what anyone’s saying.

‘We had the same mindset. In Adelaide, we had Australia none for two, with Michael Clarke walking out to bat. I didn’t go four slips, two gullies, short leg: I still had an extra cover, two slips and a gully. The point being that we’re not playing that game – we’re not trying to blast them out. We’re going to make it very difficult for them to score, and allow the pressure to get to them that way.’

Clarke soon followed, leaving Australia shellshocked at two for three. They never recovered.

Stokes’s team have irritated Australia thanks to Bazball, but there may yet be time to change public perception.

‘We won a lot of respect in the early part of that tour,’ says Strauss. ‘It was like: “You guys are actually giving us a go this time." In some quarters of the Australian public, there wasn’t a lot of love for the Australian cricket team.’

You never know. If the locals begin applauding England’s audacity, Stokes may yet end up in the pantheon.