By the end of that Ashes series, all bar two pieces of the Australian selection puzzle had been solved.

The batting piece was the smallest, though still an important, piece of the puzzle; George Bailey, who ascended to the Test team on the back of white-ball smashing.

While Bailey wouldn’t have similar Test form, he still fit into a right-handed bashing machine that specifically loaded up with that sort of right-hander to not just survive Graeme Swann, but to smash him out of the attack.

The other missing piece of the puzzle was the biggest – Mitchell Johnson.

The query about Australia’s batting in foreign lands was never going to be answered in the next series, but when the next series is a home Ashes series, no one really cares about foreign queries. Still, the broader query about Australia’s batting was very much in the public eye, and when Australia were 6-132 in blameless conditions at Brisbane, it was not about to go away.

But then Brad Haddin played a rescue act, and a fresh Mitchell Johnson also showed the first disdain towards Graeme Swann for the series, hitting him for six on multiple occasions and leaving him wicket-less in a bowling display dominated by the childishly lampooned Stuart Broad.

The game moved into hyper-fast tempo when Australia took the ball, and after England’s batting line-up was demolished for the first of many, many times in the series, Australia’s batsmen showed they were more than adept at second innings bashing, especially David Warner.

Michael Clarke scored a century to confirm he was in the right position at number four after Broad had worked him over on Day 1, and Joe Root had to be frequently employed to protect Swann. Chris Tremlett did the job that could have been predicted before the series began, and England treated him as though he made a performance that couldn’t have been predicted after the series, and dropped him.

At Adelaide, Clarke joined with Haddin’s rescue act. England’s fielding and bowling meant that Haddin got multiple lives, and both moved past centuries. England’s twin spinner gamble didn’t pay off, and Australia’s aggressive tail-enders removed any doubt from Swann’s mind that this would be his last series, with both Ryan Harris and Nathan Lyon hopping into him as Australia’s skipped merrily on the way to a declaration.

England’s batting was such that Australia didn’t really need to do any more batting for the Test, although they did to give the bowlers a rest, and went to Perth 2-0.

Perth was the scene of England’s total on-field disintegration. After Haddin, along with a century from Steve Smith, which reversed Matt Prior’s prediction that he was playing his last Test, saved Australia for the third consecutive time, England were again left chasing the match.

Swann probably bowled his best at the WACA, with the dismissals of Warner and Clarke almost straight away on Day 1, but Prior let through multiple stumping chances off Warner, and he made the Broad-less attack pay.

Prior’s keeping off Swann had always been his weak point, even in the time of strength in 2010-11, and it was magnified as he struggled at the WACA. Shane Watson clubbed Swann out of Test cricket on Day 4, and England just went worse from there. Tim Bresnan had to run out Watson after Ian Bell drop a sitter, and then missed out on the wicket of Bailey after a catch had been skied between Bell and Jimmy Anderson that neither of them went for in confusion.

Anderson had to pay the biggest price however. With Alastair Cook virtually option-less but to turn to him as Australia swung for the declaration, Anderson took the new ball and there were one or two deliveries that made it seem as though he would continue his mastery over Bailey. However, Bailey was able to swing 28 off the over.

“Michael Clarke has seen enough,” James Brayshaw screamed. He sure had. Why else would he have been waving them in?

But there was also a symbolic side to Bailey’s 28-run over. The one Australian batsman without a major or memorable contribution in the series with bat in hand, Bailey had one now.

Australian batting wouldn’t be seen again until after the Ashes had been secured. They reappeared in maybe the most English conditions of the series and batting second due to Clarke’s decision to bowl first. And they showed that, for everything that happened, they still struggled mightily facing any sort of first innings target. They fell behind, and had Haddin and Cook’s tactics on the third morning to thank for not being well behind. England had forgotten how to win at that point, meaning Australia had a reasonable chase made easier, and the game was finished much simpler than it should have been on Day 4.

Sydney was the one match where Australia lost 20 wickets, but the runs also cascaded quicker than at other times in the series. England looked beaten when Haddin was dismissed at 6-226, and it got worse from there. After Smith and Haddin did the leg work in the first innings, Chris Rogers confirmed how much he liked facing a Swann-less England attack, and Bailey played his last Test knock (to date) as the second top scorer.

The Ashes was great, but Australia’s batting was still questionable. It had failed the only time it had to bat second in the series, facing only a moderate total. South Africa wasn’t going to let Haddin save Australia in every Test.

As it turned out, Haddin barely scored a run in South Africa, either because he was batting for a declaration or copping Dale Steyn in crazy-eyes mode. However, Australia’s specialist batsmen stood up in two of the three Tests.

No one stood up more than the man of the series, David Warner. He resumed the role of second-innings kicker in chief, and allowed Australia to make the running in the Newlands decider. Clarke’s overdue hundred against the short balls of Morne Morkel meant he had a more pleasant Newlands memory than last time. Smith was the most consistent batsman on the tour if measured by performances in the first and second innings of a match.

The interesting career of Shaun Marsh was resumed, and followed type, with a magnificent hundred in the first innings, followed by a pair and dumping after the loss at Port Elizabeth. Alex Doolan, the new No.3 in Watson’s absence and then in his presence at Newlands, nearly made a hundred, but the jury was still out.

However, in spite of the series win, Port Elizabeth served as a reminder of Australian weakness. Rogers and Warner scored runs in the fourth innings, Rogers going on to a century, but the match followed the script for Australian loss away from home: a large first innings total, compiled slowly but surely on a batsman’s pitch, before the patience of opposition bowlers to orthodox fields is good enough to give you large advantage in the game, as the match doesn’t follow the fast Australian timetable. Also, the match showed the problems with a nightwatchman, but that’s not just an Australian problem.

Australia could set the tempo, but they still hadn’t learnt how to react to it for long enough to set their own tempo. Next on the schedule was the UAE, the one place in the cricket world where, if you can’t do that, you are guaranteed to be in big trouble.

The bowlers couldn’t do their jobs. That was a rarity for Australia, though understandable in the batsman-friendly conditions, considering they didn’t have Harris. But the batsmen had no real excuse for not doing their job – not in those conditions, against an inexperienced Test attack.

The failure was communal, as shown by the struggle to get to 300 in the first innings of both matches and by the fact only Warner posted a century in the series. Big partnerships simply didn’t happen. No performance like the performance put on by New Zealand at the WACA in 2015, when Perth was not too far removed from Abu Dhabi, was summoned.

Australia decided to repeat what they did in India, and throw Glenn Maxwell into a hot seat that wasn’t capable of filling. Conversely, Younus Khan looked like he had found immunity from ever being dismissed, and Pakistan always had two big partnerships.

Michael Clarke’s last Test century, coming in his last Test match on Australian soil, was his most inspirational considering the tragic passing of Phillip Hughes. The Australian batsmen set up the Adelaide Test, with Clarke, Smith and Warner all making big runs to ensure the bowlers had enough runs to defend, despite Virat Kohli.

Smith, captain for the rest of the series, used his time as stand-in captain to take over the mantle of best batsman in the team, scoring hundreds in all Tests. Australia itself scored more than 500 runs in the first innings of every Test, but at the Gabba and the MCG the tail had to do a fair bit of the work.

Brisbane, the only match where Australia batted second, was turned around by Johnson and Smith, not by two specialist batsmen. At the MCG, Smith in the first innings and Shaun Marsh in the second innings spent much of their time with the tail. It was enough for Smith to send a New Year’s message to his batsmen for Sydney – do all the work, “you have to step up.”

That the response was every member of the top six scoring half-centuries or more was the first sign of a later trend – Smith, while a lesser fielding captain than Clarke, had the edge in getting the most out of his batsmen.

As Clarke’s replacement, Marsh had made two half centuries, including a 99, but was far from a compelling selection. When Adam Voges demanded selection in the Caribbean, Marsh was granted a reprieve by Rogers suffering a concussion, with Joe Burns cut from the squad altogether.

Voges and the tail had to save Australia in Dominica, again showing that Australia’s batsmen couldn’t be relied upon to take the match by the scruff of the neck if they had to bat second. At Jamaica, newly promoted No.3 Smith led the weathering of the Jerome Taylor storm. A big lead was established, and while the openers set aside previous disappointments with grafting half-centuries, Clarke didn’t allow himself the luxury of time at the crease, declaring in the innings far earlier than expected, late on the third evening.

It was this ageing pack seeking to complete their list of cricketing achievements before mass retirement that went to the United Kingdom in 2015. Harris never made it to the first Test, Watson and Haddin barely.

Haddin’s status wasn’t as questioned as Watson’s. Even though he had only one half-century alongside his name since the Ashes, he had been a star of that home series. Dropping him before a ball was bowled would have been handing the psychological advantage to England, particularly considering the regard he was held in by his teammates. Watson was not so lucky. His last match at Cardiff was made the soundtrack of mockery.

The necessity of Watson’s dropping wasn’t even the issue by the end of the Cardiff Test. It’s that the reaction just went over the top. It was sometimes hard to remember that someone other than Watson had represented Australia in the Test.

Australia’s real problem was the inability of anyone to score hundreds, particularly in the first innings, where every batsman at least made a start but couldn’t go on. It was one of the best examples in this period of Australia not being able to count a decent first innings opposition total with long partnerships between specialist batsmen. It also meant Australia’s couldn’t grab a lead in the series while England still had any mental scars from the last series. In a way, it was the most disappointing display of the entire period of 2009-2016.

Lord’s was Australia’s match from start to finish, but the pitches were rethought as a consequence for the rest of the Ashes. Australia opted to retain Peter Nevill over returning Haddin to the team. Rogers, after nearly having to pull out of the third Test, was the only batsman capable of coping with first English seamer pitch and conditions of the series.

In the second innings, when other batsmen aside from the English specialist could be expected to contribute more, the failure of the batsmen (Warner apart) meant that Australia weren’t able to capitalise on the injury to James Anderson late on the second day, despite the best efforts of Nevill and Mitchell Starc. In short, Edgbaston was bad for Australia. But what was to follow at Trent Bridge would be far, far worse.

In swapping Marshes, Australia’s focus was clearly on having a side that was capable of building a big partnership before breaking one. It was a fair call. The selection demanded communal success. What happened was communal failure in its ugliest form.

Stuart Broad was excellent, but Australia were horrible. Push after push, edge after edge. 60 all out. 18.3 overs. Clarke was about the only batsman who didn’t get out to his first errors, but that only prolonged the ugliness, and his eventual dismissal was reminiscent of Haddin’s at Newlands in 2011.

But as bad as that performance was, it was a watershed, even more than any other time in the period 2009-2016. Australia’s batting couldn’t go on like this. Australia needed a batting unit that could make the big partnerships in foreign conditions against good attacks. The first place to start the recovery would be at The Oval, and there’s no time like the present to change something.