When England take the field in Christchurch on Friday it will be 152 days since they arrived in Australia at the beginning of an overseas campaign which has stretched through a whole Southern Hemisphere summer and into autumn.
The leaves on the trees along the River Avon and around Hagley Oval are turning a distinct red and though the recent days have been warm there is a seasonal change in the air. It says something about how late this Test is being played that on Sunday the clocks in New Zealand go back an hour, with the start time for the match being - sensibly - brought forward by half an hour to try and avoid issues with the light. However, if the evenings are cloudy playing hours could yet be cut. That won't really be an issue for New Zealand, who only need a draw to take the series, but England may need to force the pace.
Let's not get carried away though. First they need to get into the contest, something they failed miserably at in Auckland - almost historically so when they were 23 for 8 and threatening the lowest Test total of all-time. It's not that underserving teams haven't been aided in their escapes before, but it really is a good thing that the two days of rain did not allow England to secure a draw. No get-out-jail-free card.
"It was disappointing, and a bit embarrassing from our point of view as batsmen," Dawid Malan admitted of the collapse. "We'd struggled a lot in the Ashes, and had come out here with high hopes to be able to score a lot of runs.
"We are coming up against some really good bowlers from New Zealand, guys who have played a hell of a lot of cricket for their country and are really skilful. We just weren't up to the task on the first day. Whether the ball did a little bit more than we thought, whether we didn't play as well, didn't move our feet… it was really poor.
"I think in the second innings we went out there and showed a lot of fight - and that's the fight we need to be showing in every single innings we play here."
Sure, they batted better on the final day but it could hardly get much worse. And even their attempts to save the game were pockmarked by major moments of carelessness: Mark Stoneman hooking to long leg the ball after reaching fifty, Jonny Bairstow pulling a long hop to midwicket and Ben Stokes slicing to point after four-and-a-half hours of diligence.
Only head coach Trevor Bayliss has done the whole shebang since arriving in Australia - grabbing a couple of nights at home in Sydney along the way - and while the players involved in the one-day side have enjoy the significant highs of beating Australia and New Zealand, for the Test-only crew there has been nothing but disappointment. Do they have it in them to overturn their winless run overseas before it hits a record of 13 matches?
"When you're away this long, it might not be that you're playing a hell of a lot, but from a mental point of view it does get quite tough being away," Malan said. "It's a lot of travelling, a lot of time in hotels, a lot of training days … that does drain you quite a bit. But we're international cricketers - it's our dream, what we all want to do, so it's about finding a way to get through those periods."
England players have been keen to dress up the 4-0 Ashes loss by saying how they were 'in' all five matches for periods of time. But whether with bat or ball they couldn't sustain it. Just three centuries and one five-wicket haul in that series speaks of the lack of match-defining performances. Whether you give any credence to attempts to soften the margin in Australia, it is certainly true to say they did not crash the way they did in Auckland.
When a side is struggling there is often, in hindsight, a moment where things bottom out. In one sense England's last such marker was the 2013-14 Ashes whitewash, but a more direct comparison to what is happening now is Jamaica in 2009 when they were bowled out for 51 by Jerome Taylor and Sulieman Benn. That performance came on the back of the ugly end to Kevin Pietersen's brief captaincy tenure and though there aren't the same internal rifts this time (that can be left to Australia for now) it could be that 58 becomes viewed as a similar low point even if right now - on the back of five innings defeats in nine overseas Tests - a turnaround looks long odds against.
Still, there was a similar feeling in 2009. England should have won the next game - denied by a final-wicket stand between Daren Powell and Fidel Edwards in the rearranged Antigua Test - and with a slightly more adventurous declaration in Trinidad could have squared the series. After the defeat at Sabina Park, Ian Bell was the fall guy and spent much of the rest of the tour shadow-boxing with security man Reg Dickason.
There is every chance that a senior player will pay the price for last week's debacle with Moeen Ali looking likely to be dropped for the first time in his career. He, more than anyone, has seen his Test form hit a low over the last six matches. A response is needed to something like 58 all out. It would not need to be terminal for Moeen, far from it. He need only needs to look at Bell to know that: he played more than half his Test career after that watershed moment in West Indies. England have been away so long the seasons are changing; it's about time the team did as well.