Between the summers of 1989 and 2005, Australia won every single Ashes series. For eight Ashes in a row, England were barely in the hunt; a period of dominance in this most prestigious cricket fixture that had not been seen since the English supremacy of the 1880s.

Then, in the summer of 2005, that Australian dominance came to an end in one of the greatest Ashes series of all-time as Michael Vaughan’s England beat an Australian team packed with talent and experience to break the Antipodean stranglehold on the famous urn.

In the series since, honours have been even, with four English wins to three Australian, but there has been one consistent feature. For four series in a row now, Australia have been unable to win the Ashes on English soil. You have to go back to the beginning of the century and Steve Waugh’s ruthless Aussie squad to find the last time the tourists claimed the Ashes in England.

But could this year be different? The bookmakers suggest not. The television viewers who switch on Sky to see the opening of the First Test at Edgbaston on August 1, will be watching an England team that is heavily fancied by sports betting companies to regain the Ashes that they lost in 2017-18. Joe Root’s side are generally available at 4/5 to win the series, while an Australian win is quoted at 2/1 and a drawn series at 6/1. And if you want to bet on the Australians to retain the Ashes outright (for which a series draw would be sufficient) you can back them at 11/10.

To anyone who watched the last Ashes series, in which England were comprehensively outplayed on Australian soil and lost 4-0, those odds might seem strange. But since the aura of invincibility has disappeared from Australian cricket, their visits to England have tended to go badly. The 2009 vintage, led by Ricky Ponting lost a scrappy series, while 2013 and 2015 saw an Australian squad in transition undone by an England team that was peaking under Andy Flower’s coaching.

This time, though, things could be different. The traumatic ball-tampering scandal involving David Warner and captain Steve Smith, has had one benefit, in enabling Australian selectors to audition a number of batsmen who might have had to wait longer for their opportunity. In Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne and Kurtis Paterson, Australia have three exciting new middle-order batting talents, to supplement the returning Smith, while Joe Burns and Marcus Harris could be strong foils for Warner.

This looks like being the strongest batting line-up to embark on an Ashes tour in at least the last decade, and it will be complemented by a bowling attack featuring three of the world’s most effective fast bowlers in Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins, as well as arguably the international game’s best and most experienced spinner, Nathan Lyon. Up against an England team that has a number of gaps in the batting order, and no obvious replacements for their veteran bowlers James Anderson and Stuart Broad, this could well be the year when Aussie punters looking for the best bets on the Bigbetbookmakers.com site can back their boys with confidence.