"Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust … if Thommo don't get ya, Lillee must!" This epitaph was printed in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph in January 1975, alongside a famous cartoon by Rigby depicting a battered and bruised British Lion being carried off in a coffin, pelted with beer cans and pursued by a pair of sweaty-toothed fast bowlers. It neatly summed up the disastrous campaign of 1974-75 - a winter when England, quite literally, did not know what had hit them. Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee have since become recognised as one of the most devastating fast-bowling combinations the world has ever seen. But that winter, in their differing ways, they sprang from nowhere. In Lillee's case, his ability was well known, thanks to his exploits on the 1972 tour of England. But it was also well known that he had barely lifted a cricket ball since suffering a stress fracture of the spine the following winter. For much of that time, his entire torso had been encased in plaster - the chances of his playing in the opening Test at Brisbane seemed minimal.

Thomson was different. His approach to the crease - a lackadaisical shuffle followed by a back-breaking, shoulder-wrenching "whang" - had never before nor since been witnessed on the cricket pitch. Yet, up to this point he was more famous for his comments in a magazine article, in which he had said he preferred hitting batsmen to getting them out. Certainly his Test credentials bore this boast out. In his only match, two years earlier, he had returned the underwhelming figures of 19-1-110-0 (he did have a broken foot as an excuse), and until a move from New South Wales to Queensland at the end of the 1973-74 season, he wasn't even a regular in the Sheffield Shield.

Yet both would play, and perhaps understandably in the circumstances, England were not prepared for the onslaught. Their chances of survival were not helped by the absence of Geoff Boycott, who had flounced into self-imposed exile after Mike Denness was awarded the captaincy. Yet, in choosing to omit John Snow from their tour party - the man whose hostility had done so much to retrieve the Ashes in 1970-71 - England effectively denied themselves the right of reply.

Australia's mastery could be measured as much by England's body-count as by the 4-1 series result. Dennis Amiss never regained his confidence after Thomson's inswinging bouncer crushed his thumb in the first Test. John Edrich suffered a broken hand in the same match, and later retired hurt when Lillee cracked his ribs in the fourth Test. Brian Luckhurst was struck on the hand in Thomson's first over at Perth - he would never play Test cricket again and retired from the game within two years. And two of the defining images of the series were provided by a brace of future England coaches. At Perth, David Lloyd was dealt an agonising blow to the groin which turned his box inside-out. And at Sydney, Keith Fletcher was smacked on the cap-badge by a bouncer of such venom that it rebounded almost to Ross Edwards at cover.

Amid the wreckage, England had their heroes. Tony Greig, slashing bouncers over the slips and signalling his own boundaries, careered to an astonishingly belligerent 110 at Brisbane. Alan Knott picked off half-centuries in four of the first five Tests, including 106 not out at Adelaide, only the second century by a wicketkeeper in Ashes cricket. And Colin Cowdrey, a portly 41 years old, was drafted in as a late replacement, a full 20 years after the first of his six Ashes trips in 1954-55. He set the right example, hopping boldly into line at every opportunity, but a top score of 41 and an average of 18.33 suggested that the flesh was weaker than it was willing.

England were undone not only by the hostility of the bowling, but by an atmosphere of beery bloodlust that turned the Test arena into a Colosseum. Lillee, who somehow failed to take more than two wickets per innings for the first four matches, orchestrated the crowd into a frenzy of chanting and shouting with his histrionics, and even took to sledging England's batsmen in his close-of-play TV interviews. And despite the best efforts of Bob Willis and Derek Underwood, whose 17 wickets did not include a single tailender, Australia's batting was too strong to allow England a way back. Greg Chappell was peerless, with 608 runs in the series including centuries at Sydney and Melbourne, but the individual honours were stolen by Doug Walters, who completed a century in the final session of the second day at Perth with a last-ball six off Willis.

Denness was utterly fazed by the experience, and with 65 runs in the first three matches, he felt obliged to drop himself for the fourth Test. He would later return to score 188 in the final Test at Melbourne, but with Thomson absent with an elbow injury, and Lillee limited to six overs in the match, it was a hollow victory. Still, England eventually won the match by an innings and four runs - a clear indication of how two men made the difference between the sides.

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