Chris Tremlett can still the moment he broke James Anderson’s rib. England’s players had gathered for a pre-Ashes boot camp in Germany in 2010, and for reasons best known to the team’s management, a boxing tournament had been laid on – with the 6ft 8in Tremlett being matched with Anderson, England’s premier fast bowler. 

“It was a bit of a mismatch,” Tremlett recalled, “but I was told the task was to beat the c–p out of each other for 30 seconds. It was a bit of a free for all. I heard him go ‘argh!’ and he winced and rolled around on the floor. Looking back it is funny but it’s not nice to hurt one of your mates.” 

Tremlett is chatting on Zoom with Tim Bresnan, the Telegraph bringing together two of the unsung heroes of that famous 2010-11 triumph. The original aim was to talk about how to bowl in Australia but such are the memories of that unforgettable tour that bowling lengths and plans make up little of the conversation. Instead the two remember the camaraderie that characterised England’s only win in Australia since 1986-87. Anderson is in Australia, preparing for the Ashes so the question about the punch is put to him later. Speaking from Brisbane, he had a slightly different recollection. 

“One hundred per cent, I was not rolling around on the floor! It was about halfway through the 15 seconds. I remember saying to the doctor that one stung a bit and I can’t breathe. Everyone else had been matched against someone their own size. But I got Chris, an absolute giant. I gave it a good go though.” 

It was actually Bresnan who ended up winning that boxing tournament, beating Andrew Strauss in the final (“You think he is nice and polite but he was a bit of an animal – I had to box clever”), although the memories from Germany were not unanimously warm. “They were complete a——– for four days,” says Tremlett about the ex-Australian special forces soldiers who were in charge of the camp in a Bavarian forest. “We could not call each other by first names and if we did we were down doing 20 press-ups. When we arrived they made us pick up bricks and hold them for three hours. They had a sense of humour, though. When we lost the Test in Perth one of those bricks was left on the dressing room floor. It had writing on it. ‘Keep going guys’.” 

 ‘Mate you’ve had a bad day at the office, don’t embarrass yourself in front of all these people’

Ultimately, that camp did the job. Anderson recovered from his fractured rib to take 24 wickets in the series, Bresnan was picked in Melbourne, where he took the wicket that ensured the Ashes were retained, while Tremlett – whose pace and bounce unsettled Australia from the third Test onwards – claimed the wicket that actually won the urn in Sydney. 

Those playing memories are still fresh but successful tours are not just about great preparation, planning and execution. Winning helps morale of course, but both believe it was the mature approach to management that played a major part. 

“It started on the first night,” Bresnan says. “We went on a monster tear-up to get over the jetlag in Subiaco [a suburb of Perth],” says Bresnan. “Reg Dickason was our security guy and he liked to check the CCTV to see when the lads got back to the hotel. At about 4.30am an ambulance turned up and KP [Kevin Pietersen] climbed out the back of it. Some English expat ambulance driver had spotted the lads walking back and said, ‘Do you want a lift to the hotel?’ Even Straussy was out that night busting moves on the dance floor. That set the tone for the whole tour. We had a lot of fun off the field and enjoyed each other’s company. It was the best tour I went on for that.” 

It was also the night the sprinkler dance was born, a move that England would perform in front of the Barmy Army when they won by an innings in Melbourne. 

“It was a different world then,” says Tremlett. “Going on nights out you were not worried about people taking a picture of you. Now anyone could take a photo and post it on Twitter. Now it is more intrusive and probably less fun.”