England's best tour since............?

My nomination would be India in 1984/85, which came close to cancellation following the assassination of the British High Commissioner and Indira Gandhi. We lost the first test, but came back to win the series 2 - 1. It was also a Botham-less tour, which makes the achievement all the more remarkable.

For me since 1986/7 - when we cleaned up the lot. Though i'm quite fond of our early 2000's tour of Sri Lanka. Coming back from 1-0 down to win. Crap decisions, controversy galore...

I thought about 1986/87, but decided against it because were actually favourites (we never have been when touring India to my knowledge). Also, the fifth test loss was a bit of a blemish as it gave the impression that the series was closer than it actually was.

As far as the size of victories, I can't think of a more emphatic tour for England (discounting Bangladesh etc).

We played very well in 2004/5, but for the empatic nature of the victory I think you would have to go back to maybe 1970/1 for a similarly impressive victory.

I do think the Australia teams in 86/87 and 78/79 were very weak so I don't rate those tours too highly (of course though unless you were there its hard to know - i'm certainly too young to remember them and they didn't used to televise them back then, I guess there's always TMS?)

86/7 was my first listening/watching of an overseas tour. followed it on radio and there was live coverage of the final days play of each test on BBC 2 I think.

It was special because we'd just lost to India & NZ at home in the same season. I remember being startled that players were wearing coloured clothing too. I have some bizarre recollection that the Ashes were halted after the 2nd test to play some one day stuff.

Both teams were pretty poor so yes, I guess 2010/11 and 3 innings victories does override that tour.

How did BBC2 know which day would be the final day of play?

It didn't, remember this was midnight onwards. Not much on TV after 11.30pm in 1986 apart from the test card!

That's true JK - C4 had only been on air for 4 years at that time ..... no Sky in those days.

JKLever wrote:86/7... I have some bizarre recollection that the Ashes were halted after the 2nd test to play some one day stuff.

That was fairly standard stuff in Australia post-WSC for several years. There'd be two teams out here at the same time and one would be playing a Test, the other a tour match, and then the ODI circus rolled on interminably between the Tests, often played over 15 preliminary matches before a best of 5 (later 3) match final series.

GSC said it was one of the reasons for his burning out in the early 80s.