Brendon McCullum. Photo / Photosport
By Nick Hoult and Tim Wigmore
England's victory over South Africa in the third and final test at the Oval put the finishing touch on a memorable summer for the test team.
After a thumping in Australia over the winter, a loss to the West Indies in the Caribbean and the resignation of Joe Root as captain, six wins from seven test matches was unthinkable.
Here, Telegraph Sport details the 13 factors which led the side's stunning revival.
Filmmaker Sam Mendes looked at the audience at the Ham Yard Hotel in Piccadilly and summed up how popular Ben Stokes is among his team-mates. "They're all here. Anyone would think you're the captain," he said before introducing Stokes to talk about his documentary.
They would have been there anyway. Players have always followed Stokes. Now more than ever. His methods are simple: clear language, a hint of menace and total loyalty to his players.
When the team gathered at Lord's for the first South Africa test after six weeks apart he felt they needed to regroup. He pulled out a whiteboard in the dressing room and wrote down "winning" and "environment" (spelling the latter incorrectly) as what he wanted to discuss.
Environment for Stokes means fun. "I miss it when I'm not here," he said that week. The curfew has been relaxed, communication has improved and mollycoddling banned - the nutritionist has left and peripheral support staff have been trimmed or not allowed in the dressing room during play. It is about the team. Players know their roles and what is expected, and are empowered to take responsibility for their own games. Just don't ask Stokes to spell it out.
When Stokes was appointed, England had won just one of their past 17 tests - among the worst runs in their history. Some called for the new head coach to be a disciplinarian like Justin Langer.
But England's decision-makers - new managing director Rob Key and performance director Mo Bobat - believed that the side needed a fresh approach to reinvigorate and liberate their talents. Key reached out to Brendon McCullum, who had a track record of changing the team culture as New Zealand captain.
McCullum's relish for the task, and missionary zeal – he always made it clear that only the test job, not the limited-overs one, appealed – made him the outstanding candidate for the head coach's job during the recruitment process.
McCullum has broken protocol this summer. Normally coaches speak to the media after every test. McCullum decided he would only do so after defeats to allow the players take credit for victories rather than him be the story.
It means he has only spoken three times: wrap ups at the end of New Zealand and South Africa series and following the first test defeat at Lord's to South Africa. We know little about how he sees the game, what he does behind the scenes or how he handles players.
He is thoughtful when he speaks but gives little away. Luckily the players have helped fill in the blanks. They knew times had changed at Lord's after day one against New Zealand.
England bowled New Zealand out for 132 but by the close were 116 for seven themselves, advantage lost, back to square one. Not to McCullum, "We've had a great day," he told the team, always dwelling on the positive.
"Run to the danger" he urged Jonny Bairstow before his Trent Bridge blitz a week later. Even James Anderson, who has seen everything and more, feels the change, saying: "I've smiled more than I ever have on a cricket field."
Practice has been scaled back. It was remarkable to see England finish nets at 11am, the day before the Oval test. Under Root they would have been there for another two hours.
McCullum is clear: do what you need, then go and enjoy yourself. Nothing is done for appearances. Team huddles on the outfield are rare. Stokes prefers to do them in the dressing room, away from the cameras because he doesn't want to make a scene on the field.
They turn up later for a day's play figuring test cricket is intense enough as it is so why make it longer? There are fewer specialist coaches, the onus now being on players to think for themselves. The nutritionist (who was often seen on tour) has left. McCullum doesn't think players need to be told what to eat. And never, ever dwell on the negative, only the positive in practice.
England have an unusual talent pool right now: a relative dearth of conventional test batsmen - no specialist batsmen to debut since 2015 averages more than 30.3 - but an extraordinary array of white-ball batsmen.
Defences in test cricket in England are less robust, creating a certain logic in empowering batsmen to use their limited-overs skills. This summer, England have scored at 4.11 an over in tests - the highest figure in any home summer in their history.
The result has been remarkable. Like any good one-day team, England have been particularly ruthless taking down weak links: New Zealand off spinner Michael Bracewell conceded 285 runs at six runs an over; Mohammad Siraj and Shardul Thakur were both even more expensive in the India test.
The buccaneering ethos is inextricably linked to a belief in selection continuity.
"People are less likely to take risks if there are major consequences - that's just human nature," one insider observes. England have not dropped a player all summer, only omitting players when they have been injured or - as in Ollie Robinson returning for Matthew Potts, who remains in the squad - other players have returned.
"We'll have a chase," Ben Stokes said at Edgbaston against India. The game ended with England waltzing to their target of 378 with the nonchalance of an overzealous dad playing barbecue cricket.
Yet in many ways it has been the ideal summer to bat as England have done. The Dukes ball went soft early throughout the first four tests, creating scope for England to plunder the old ball. Until the series against South Africa, pitches were notably more benign than in recent summers.
If conditions have generally been on England's side, so has serendipity: had Stokes not been reprieved by a Colin de Grandhomme no-ball in the first test of the summer at Lord's, England would have been 76-5 chasing 277.
In the third test against New Zealand, Jamie Overton should have been out lbw, leaving England 63-7 in response to New Zealand's first innings 329; the tourists opted against reviewing the decision, and the seventh wicket pair added another 233 runs.
For years, England have agonised over Bairstow the test player: until the start of 2022, he had gone 36 test innings, stretching back to 2018, without passing 57, during which he had been moved up and down the order dizzyingly.
When Stokes became captain, he was adamant that the days of moving Bairstow would be over: he would be England's number five, forget keeping and just "get your sudoku and not worry about anything." The night before the Headingley test, Bairstow hosted the entire team at his house; he promptly scored 162, one of four centuries in his scintillating summer.
Bowling coach Jon Lewis will no longer be based with the team during test matches. McCullum believes if you have Broad and Anderson why do you need a bowling coach as well?
It is quite a turnaround. When Stokes was offered the job by Rob Key, he said that he would take it on one condition: Anderson and Broad must play. Yet, in the summer that England's two highest wicket-takers turned 40 and 36, they still adapted their approach, embracing greater aggression with the ball.
"I'm not a defensive bowler anymore at all," Anderson said after the Old Trafford test. "They want me to take wickets the whole time and think about taking wickets the whole time."
Initially, the two bowled fuller. Over the summer as a whole, contrary to the common perception, Anderson and Broad haven't actually bowled particularly full: in the first 30 overs of the innings, Broad has bowled 20cm fuller than his previous average in England, but Anderson has actually bowled a little shorter.
Yet the two have happily adapted to England's needs, oscillating between attacking the stumps or using bouncers depending on what Stokes thinks is the best way to attack. After being omitted in the Caribbean, the team management believe that Anderson and Broad were more amenable to input.
Both enjoyed fine summers - Broad with 29 wickets at 27, Anderson 27 at 17. Broad was averaging 35 before the Old Trafford test and had just five wickets at 48.2 with the new ball. He is no longer a new-ball bowler. But first change, with a point to prove, brought out the best in him.
"Aggressive and smart" were the two mantras of Eoin Morgan as he presided over England's limited-overs transformation after the 2015 World Cup. Stokes's reign has paid more heed to the first mantra so far; his own audacious batting, frequently charging down the wicket against pace bowlers, has aimed to show his team-mates what he expects - initially, even if that involves an overcorrection before a new equilibrium is found.
But in the second test against South Africa at Old Trafford, Stokes took 101 balls to score his first half-century, before accelerating. England still scored at 3.9 an over, but they got there through playing shrewd, adaptable cricket: absorbing pressure when South Africa's seamers were fresh, and then accelerating as they tired and the ball softened.
For this reason, many inside the camp consider Old Trafford their most complete performance of the summer - and, perhaps, a sign of how England's methods can translate overseas, beginning in Pakistan in December.
The most successful sports teams tend to have an identity that goes far beyond the 11 players on the pitch.
The broader team management are committed to developing a whole squad who play in the same way, making it easier for players to make the step-up to the international game and helping the test side absorb any unwanted absences.
The ultimate aim is - like a leading football team - to forge a clear identity, detectable both in the first eleven and at the levels beneath.
Before the England Lions game against the touring South African side last month, McCullum addressed the squad, telling players about the opportunity that the match presented, to embrace their strengths and try and replicate the style of cricket played by the test side.
The Lions scored 672 at a rollicking 5.7 an over and won by an innings.
One trait of England's new regime has been how less established players have been empowered.
This was detectable even before the first test of the summer: Ollie Pope, with an average of 29 from 23 tests, was recalled to bat at three.
McCullum and Stokes recognised Pope as a player with the attributes to play as England wanted, with the talent to thrive for England for years.
At Lord's, Stokes swiftly introduced debutant Potts into the attack; at Trent Bridge, Jack Leach was used aggressively and took ten wickets. At Old Trafford, Ollie Robinson - notably leaner and quicker after conversations with the management and Stokes - was given the new ball ahead of Broad.
"Being England captain sucked the life out of me," Joe Root admitted. It is a measure of Root both as a player and man that he settled happily back into life in the ranks, marking his first test after his captaincy career with his first fourth innings century - and then following up with an encore at Edgbaston against India.
Root has never given the impression that he views praise for the new skipper as implied criticism of his own regime. Even his struggles against South Africa, averaging 11.5 – renewing concerns about his relative vulnerability against high pace - was tempered by the new sign that England could win without his runs.
Before Old Trafford, it had been 30 tests since England won without Root scoring at least a half-century; then, England won two in a row.
Have England actually learned anything this summer?
The one time that England batted first, they lost by an innings. Alex Lees and Zak Crawley were shaky, not managing a hundred. Ollie Pope showed flashes of brilliance but was inconsistent. Root, Bairstow and Stokes are world class but that was obvious before.
Ben Foakes is ropey against pace but scored runs when South Africa picked two spinners. Ollie Robinson can bowl when he is fit but what will he be like on flat pitches in stonking hot weather?
Jack Leach took ten wickets at Headingley but was too predictable most of the time and the attack relies on Broad and Anderson with a Dukes ball. Bazball? Strewth, more like Pommie arrogance. Except…England won six tests this summer. The last time they did that? 2004. We all know what happened next.
A three-week inquest in Hamilton is investigating the Olympian's death in 2021 aged 24.