An Ashes triumph more than a decade in the making

To turn around 14 years of failed Ashes campaigns fought on British soil, Australia pulled together a military-style planning dossier the first chapter of which was writ even before the urn was surrendered here in 2005.

It was coach Justin Langer's experience in India in 2004, a destination where Australia's men's team has found it even more difficult to triumph than in the UK of late, that spawned the notion that discipline would deliver destiny.

Langer knew from that four-Test campaign under Adam Gilchrist (regular captain Ricky Ponting missed the first three games with a broken thumb) that unflagging adherence to a clear plan was the surest way to avoid past failures.

While that malady might have begun most worryingly in England, it had spread further to the extent that Australia's preceding eight offshore Test tours (beginning with the 2015 Ashes) had yielded just one series win – against New Zealand in early 2016.

And when Langer took over as coach in the aftermath of Cape Town 2018, many planks of the action plan to reverse that record in Britain had already been fitted into place.

"A lot of people behind the scenes, not just the leadership group, do a lot of work," Langer said after Australia's win at Old Trafford ensured they would not be surrendering the Ashes in England this northern summer.

"We worked out a game plan we thought would help us win this series.

"We also used experience from 2004 against India, and how we had to be really disciplined with our approach.

"To see it all come together is a nice feeling."

The first pillar of the plan came after Australia's fourth consecutive away Ashes defeat in 2015, the nadir of which was being bowled out for 60 inside a session at Trent Bridge where batters' inadequacies against the swinging ball were laid brutally bare.

As a result, then Executive General Manager Team Performance, Pat Howard, pledged steps would be taken to redress that shortcoming and the Dukes-brand ball used for Tests in England was duly introduced into the Sheffield Shield competition.

The absence of most Test-team regulars from the domestic first-class competition when the Dukes ball was used in the second half of each summer meant its use as a preparatory tool for the next away Ashes was minimal.

But, crucially, it provided selectors with a steer as to which up-and-coming batters owned a technique and a mindset to potentially withstand its exaggerated movement, and the bowlers – such as Queensland's Michael Neser – who might best exploit it.

The deployment of the Dukes ball was something of an abstract concept given it required an adulterated version of the English ball that was needed for harsher conditions in Australia – conditions that offered no direct comparison to those that would be encountered in the UK.

There were, however, other more pragmatic measures taken to ensure the squad dispatched in 2019 was as well prepared, and as meticulously planned as circumstances would allow.

Howard spent more than a year pulling together the logistics and the resources needed to stage a Test-standard practice match between two teams of aspiring Australia Test candidates in preference to the traditional warm-up fixtures against second-string UK county teams.

Knowing that Australia's Ashes preparation would be compromised by the proximity of the ICC World Cup that immediately preceded the Test series, Howard also arranged for an Australia A tour to England while the ODI tournament was in progress.

That would allow for players who did not make muster for the World Cup squad, including Tim Paine, Travis Head, Matthew Wade and Josh Hazlewood, to hone their red-ball skills.

It was on the strength of his Australia A form, as well as his performance in the intra-squad practice game at Southampton, that Wade won his place in the squad and then posted a vital century in the opening Test at Edgbaston.

There had also been a strong case for Hazlewood, having spent months sidelined with a back injury earlier in the year, to be included in the Word Cup squad rather than consigned to Australia A duties.

But Australia's selectors felt he was no certainty to make the ODI starting XI, and that time prior to the Ashes would therefore be better spent getting him used to bowling Test match line and length for Australia A than on the periphery of the white-ball team.

It has proved an inspired choice, with Hazlewood currently the series' third-highest wicket-taker despite playing only three of the four Tests.

While Hazlewood was hitting his Test match form for Australia A, others such as Marnus Labuschagne, James Pattinson and Peter Siddle were dominating the British domestic county competition, with Pattinson fine-tuning with the A-team.

As all that was unfolding, strategies had been put in place to ensure the smoothest possible transition from the white-ball World Cup schedule to the vastly different discipline of Test cricket.

Under that blueprint, bowlers considered most likely to adapt immediately to Test requirements (Pat Cummins, Pattinson and Siddle) would be deployed in the first Test, while Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc were eased into the series later on.

Starc was identified as taking more time to adapt to red-ball regimes and would therefore be held until the back half of the Ashes campaign at venues such as Old Trafford and The Oval that better suited his bowling.

"This group has done it better than most (to tour England), if I am honest, hence the result," skipper Paine said of the strict template applied to this series.

"We've known for a while England play different than we do over here.

"This team has made a real effort of putting their ego aside and roll up their sleeves and do the job asked of them rather than worry about how it looks or the brand or style we play.

"We want to play winning cricket and need to adapt to conditions that allow us to do that, and this group have done that superbly."

Not that all the detailed planning has progressed without setbacks.

Even though the Bupa Support Team's medical and strength and conditioning personnel have remarkably kept the playing group on the park throughout four months of relentless top-level cricket in the UK (with the exception of Usman Khwaja's hamstring injury), they had their setbacks along the way.

Fast bowler Jhye Richardson was an integral part of Australia's strategy prior to him dislocating his shoulder during an ODI before the World Cup, and thoughts of having him added to the Test squad after the third Ashes Test were eventually shelved due to the rate of his recovery.

Likewise, the delayed concussion suffered by Steve Smith during the second Test at Lord's could be neither foreseen nor fast-tracked.

But just as Starc's recovery from a torn pectoral muscle, Hazlewood's back injury, the elbow surgeries undergone by Smith and David Warner, and Khawaja's hamstring strain were meticulously monitored, so too was their re-integration to playing seamless.

It posed a contrast to the misfortune suffered by England's premier pace bowler James Anderson who has twice this summer attempted to return from a calf strain only for it to be re-injured.

The selection panel were also pivotal to operation Ashes, earmarking the complement of fast bowlers Australia had dreamed for years of unleashing in unison for this sustained assault on the Ashes.

They were also forced to make some harsh calls on players with iron-clad cases for inclusion such as Joe Burns, Kurtis Patterson and Jackson Bird, but the series current 2-1 scoreline vindicates their judgement.

And the work undertaken by the team of data analysts, both on the road and at the Bupa National Cricket Centre in Brisbane, has manifested most starkly in the bowling plans to England's best batter, their captain Joe Root.

Not only has Root become the first England skipper to post three ducks in the course of a single Ashes series, he had never been dismissed for a golden duck in his seven-year Test career until this campaign.

It has now happened to him twice, in hauntingly similar circumstances.

With the final Test to start at The Oval on Thursday, Australia now eyes its chance to secure the Ashes series win in the UK that has eluded men's teams since 2001.

Langer was a member of that playing group, but it's only since he hung up his Baggy Green Cap in 2007 and moved into coaching soon after that he's come to fully appreciate the depth and detail of preparation that goes into an operation as big as the Ashes.

"When you're a player you don't realise everything else that goes on behind what happens on the field," he said as preparations began anew but in adherence to the blueprint for the final match.

"The players are unbelievable at what they do out there, but it's satisfying to get the result after all that work."

2019 Qantas Ashes Tour of England

Australia squad: Tim Paine (c), Cameron Bancroft, Pat Cummins, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Michael Neser, James Pattinson, Peter Siddle, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Matthew Wade, David Warner.

England squad: Joe Root (c), Moeen Ali, Jimmy Anderson, Jofra Archer, Jonny Bairstow, Stuart Broad, Rory Burns, Jos Buttler, Sam Curran, Joe Denly, Jason Roy, Ben Stokes (vc), Olly Stone, Chris Woakes.

2019 Qantas Ashes Tour of England

Australia squad: Tim Paine (c), Cameron Bancroft, Pat Cummins, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Michael Neser, James Pattinson, Peter Siddle, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Matthew Wade, David Warner.

England squad: Joe Root (c), Moeen Ali, Jimmy Anderson, Jofra Archer, Jonny Bairstow, Stuart Broad, Rory Burns, Jos Buttler, Sam Curran, Joe Denly, Jason Roy, Ben Stokes (vc), Olly Stone, Chris Woakes.

First Test: Australia won by 251 runs at Edgbaston

Second Test: Match drawn at Lord's

Third Test: England won by one wicket at Headingley

Fourth Test: Australia won by 185 runs

Fifth Test: September 12-16, The Oval