Matthew Potts averages 48 with the ball in his three Tests away from home. There were various lows during England's terrible Ashes tour of Australia, many of which have been pored over endlessly in recent months. Few, though, were as brutal as the horror show Matthew Potts suffered in Sydney. Taken apart by Travis Head, he conceded 141 runs in 25 wicketless overs. Had he conceded six more he would have returned the worst figures by an England seamer in Tests.

"There's a little period of reflection where you sum up your day's work and look back at it," Potts says, speaking almost three months on. "I just had three words: 'That was bad'."

Cheek injury delays Stokes' return until May. Potts' first three overs cost 25 runs, while he ended day two with figures of 0-58 from seven. When he was first brought into the attack on day three, Head pounced immediately, flogging boundaries from each of the Durham seamer's first three balls. Potts conceded 100 runs after 15.1 overs. He was not used at all by captain Ben Stokes in the second innings as Australia chased 160 for a five-wicket win.

"Sometimes you have to roll with the punches," he says. "I got dealt a few punches and I didn't throw too many the other way. That's life. Sometimes on the big stage there's nowhere to hide in those situations and I wasn't good enough in that game."

Potts refuses to make excuses for his performance. The match was his only appearance of the series and came after injuries to Mark Wood, Jofra Archer, and Gus Atkinson. Though he played in the practice matches early on the tour, by the time he was called up he had not played in six weeks.

"I felt ready at any point throughout the series," he says. "Could it have happened differently? Quite possibly. You never know, but I felt fully ready going into that game. It could have gone the exact same way in the second Test, I'm not one to dwell on could've, would've, should've. The cold hard facts were I wasn't good enough in the last Test. That can happen in a game of cricket. With a little more experience I'm sort of able to log it as a learning experience."

Potts, who will return to action for Durham against Kent in the County Championship on Friday, may not have been on the tour at all but for Chris Woakes' shoulder injury in the final Test of the summer against India - a series the 27-year-old did not feature in. There were calls for him to come into the side throughout England's time in Australia, however, with many hoping he could bring accuracy and variety to an attack otherwise stacked with tall bowlers who bowled at high pace. Instead, he produced the most wayward showing of his career.

"In Sydney it's a cauldron," he says. "You're racking your brains, trying to think logically and rationally, and you can feel like you're under pressure a lot of the time. I was thinking about what I was trying to do, and what Ben and the team were trying to do. Execution is another thing and I certainly didn't execute as well as I could have."

Potts is keen to retain his place in England's XI when the Test summer begins in June. Just how far his Sydney struggles have pushed him down the pecking order remains to be seen. After an impressive first summer - with 20 wickets across five Tests against New Zealand, India, and South Africa - Potts' last six matches in England whites have been spread across three years. The seamer has often been left out for those who bowl quicker, or who are viewed as offering greater threat with the new ball, leaving the question of what exactly Potts is at international level.

His coach at Durham, Ryan Campbell, believes he has concentrated too much on bowling wobble-seam deliveries rather than trying to search for swing. "Probably on reflection I could have used swing more to set up the wobble seam, which might have just gone straight on rather than nipping," Potts says. "Definitely I think it is something that went out of my game slightly, probably underused."

The statistics appear to back up Campbell's argument somewhat. The average amount of swing Potts finds has dropped by 0.2 degrees compared to his first Test summer and the number of outswingers he has bowled has almost halved.

"It is probably about going back to being a workhorse that doesn't miss and has high skill," he says. "In the last couple of years I probably lost that high skill aspect of it and was probably just focused on hitting an area. I forget the fact I am a high-skill bowler and lost a bit of that in the last couple of years in trying different things and different ideas, which is fine. I tried them, they probably haven't worked for me and now it is time to strip back to the basics and be me."