Men with bouncebackability

Australia did at the WACA last week as England had done at the Oval in 2009. Not win the Ashes, but bounce back from an innings defeat to win the next Test of the series. Australia's resurgence in Perth came after they were battered by an innings and 71 runs in Adelaide, while England had regained the Ashes in south London after losing by an innings and 80 runs in Leeds. Question: How many times has a team recovered from an innings defeat to win the next match of the series? Answer: Perth was the 36th occasion. Here's a list of all of them.

The first such occurrence was during England's tour of Australia in 1895-96. Australia had beaten England by an innings and 147 runs in less than two days of play during the timeless Test at the SCG. England lost 19 wickets on the third day of the Test and their two innings of 65 and 72 lasted a total of 68 overs. Australia had leveled the five-Test series at 2-2 ahead of the decider in Melbourne. In another timeless contest at the MCG, Australia built on a first-innings lead of 29 to set England 297 to win the series. The visitors were 28 for 1 at the end of the fourth day and lost their captain, Andrew Stoddart, to the first ball off the fifth. What came next was possibly the finest innings played by an England batsman in Australia. Jack Brown won England the Test, and the series. He reached his 50 in 28 minutes, which remained the quickest half-century for more than a century, and went on to make 140 off 145 balls, adding 210 for the third wicket with Albert Ward. By the time Brown was out, England needed only 59 to win and they did so by six wickets. It remained Brown's only Test hundred for he died of heart failure in 1904, at the age of 35.

By coincidence, the next four instances of a team winning a Test after losing the previous in the series by an innings also happened in Sydney and Melbourne. The first occurrence outside Australia was only in 1952, when Pakistan toured India for the first time. In the first Test in Delhi, Pakistan were dismissed for 150 and 152 - Vinoo Mankad took 13 for 131 - after India had made 372 batting first. In the next match in Lucknow, Fazal Mahmood helped Pakistan level the series by inflicting an innings defeat on India. He took 12 for 94, skittling India for 106 and 182 in response to Pakistan's 331. In the third Test in Bombay, it was India's turn to return the favour and recover after being thrashed by an innings. They failed to win by an innings but their ten-wicket victory earned a 2-1, which they would maintain to win the series. It was the only time both teams had bounced back to win Tests after suffering innings defeats in a series.

India were just beaten by an innings and 25 runs by South Africa in Centurion on Monday, and their prospects for Durban appear bleak, but they have previous when it comes to recovering from innings defeats. In 2008, South Africa toured India and routed the hosts by an innings and 90 runs in Ahmedabad. India were decimated for 76 in 20 overs in their first innings. In a desperate attempt to level the series in the final Test, the pitch in Kanpur was tailored to India's strengths and it looked like a fifth-day surface on the first. India's spinners secured an eight-wicket win. When South Africa visited again in 2010, they once again thrashed India by an innings in Nagpur and took a 1-0 lead in the two-Test series. The pitch at Eden Gardens wasn't as spin-friendly as the one in Kanpur had been, but four centuries from India's batsmen and a five-for from Harbhajan Singh defeated South Africa by an innings and 57 runs.

In between those tours, India toured Sri Lanka in 2008 and were beaten by an innings and 239 runs in the first Test at the SSC. No team had ever recovered from a defeat of such magnitude to win the next Test. In Galle, however, Virender Sehwag made an aggressive 201 out of India's first-innings total of 329. It laid the platform for them to beat Sri Lanka by 170 runs.

Losing by an innings and then winning the next Test in the series

Team	Opposition	Ground	Lost	Scorecard			Ground	Won	Scorecard
England	Australia	Sydney	inns & 147 runs	1 Feb 1895			Melbourne	6 wickets	1 Mar 1895
Australia	England	Sydney	inns & 124 runs	13 Dec 1901			Melbourne	229 runs	1 Jan 1902
Australia	England	Melbourne	inns & 29 runs	13 Feb 1925			Sydney	307 runs	27 Feb 1925
West Indies	Australia	Melbourne	inns & 122 runs	13 Feb 1931			Sydney	30 runs	27 Feb 1931
Australia	England	Sydney	inns & 22 runs	18 Dec 1936			Melbourne	365 runs	1 Jan 1937
Pakistan	India	Delhi	inns & 70 runs	16 Oct 1952			Lucknow	inns & 43 runs	23 Oct 1952
India	Pakistan	Lucknow	inns & 43 runs	23 Oct 1952			Mumbai (BS)	10 wickets	13 Nov 1952
England	Australia	Brisbane	inns & 154 runs	26 Nov 1954			Sydney	38 runs	17 Dec 1954
India	Australia	Delhi	inns & 127 runs	12 Dec 1959			Kanpur	119 runs	19 Dec 1959
New Zealand	South Africa	Johannesburg	inns & 51 runs	2 Feb 1962			Port Elizabeth	40 runs	16 Feb 1962
Australia	England	Sydney	inns & 93 runs	7 Jan 1966			Adelaide	inns & 9 runs	28 Jan 1966
England	West Indies	Leeds	inns & 55 runs	4 Aug 1966			The Oval	inns & 34 runs	18 Aug 1966
India	West Indies	Delhi	inns & 17 runs	11 Dec 1974			Kolkata	85 runs	27 Dec 1974
Australia	West Indies	Perth	inns & 87 runs	12 Dec 1975			Melbourne	8 wickets	26 Dec 1975
Australia	India	Sydney	inns & 2 runs	7 Jan 1978			Adelaide	47 runs	28 Jan 1978
Australia	New Zealand	Brisbane	inns & 41 runs	8 Nov 1985			Sydney	4 wickets	22 Nov 1985
Sri Lanka	Pakistan	Kandy	inns & 20 runs	23 Feb 1986			Colombo (CCC)	8 wickets	14 Mar 1986
Australia	England	Melbourne	inns & 14 runs	26 Dec 1986			Sydney	55 runs	10 Jan 1987
New Zealand	Pakistan	Wellington	inns & 12 runs	17 Feb 1994			Christchurch	5 wickets	24 Feb 1994
Pakistan	Zimbabwe	Harare	inns & 64 runs	31 Jan 1995			Bulawayo	8 wickets	7 Feb 1995
England	West Indies	Birmingham	inns & 64 runs	6 Jul 1995			Manchester	6 wickets	27 Jul 1995
Sri Lanka	Pakistan	Peshawar	inns & 40 runs	8 Sep 1995			Faisalabad	42 runs	15 Sep 1995
West Indies	Australia	Adelaide	inns & 183 runs	25 Jan 1997			Perth	10 wickets	1 Feb 1997
Australia	India	Kolkata	inns & 219 runs	18 Mar 1998			Bangalore	8 wickets	25 Mar 1998
England	South Africa	Cape Town	inns & 37 runs	2 Jan 2000			Centurion	2 wickets	14 Jan 2000
England	West Indies	Birmingham	inns & 93 runs	15 Jun 2000			Lord's	2 wickets	29 Jun 2000
South Africa	Sri Lanka	Galle	inns & 15 runs	20 Jul 2000			Kandy	7 runs	30 Jul 2000
England	Sri Lanka	Galle	inns & 28 runs	22 Feb 2001			Kandy	3 wickets	7 Mar 2001
Pakistan	England	Lord's	inns & 9 runs	17 May 2001			Manchester	108 runs	31 May 2001
England	South Africa	Lord's	inns & 92 runs	31 Jul 2003			Nottingham	70 runs	14 Aug 2003
Pakistan	India	Multan	inns & 52 runs	28 Mar 2004			Lahore	9 wickets	5 Apr 2004
India	South Africa	Ahmedabad	inns & 90 runs	3 Apr 2008			Kanpur	8 wickets	11 Apr 2008
India	Sri Lanka	Colombo (SSC)	inns & 239 runs	23 Jul 2008			Galle	170 runs	31 Jul 2008
England	Australia	Leeds	inns & 80 runs	7 Aug 2009			The Oval	197 runs	20 Aug 2009
India	South Africa	Nagpur	inns & 6 runs	6 Feb 2010			Kolkata	inns & 57 runs	14 Feb 2010
Australia	England	Adelaide	inns & 71 runs	3 Dec 2010			Perth	267 runs	16 Dec 2010