England’s cricketers have lost the Ashes, after being defeated in the third Test match in Adelaide by 82 runs. The Adelaide defeat follows humiliating routs by eight wickets in both Perth and Brisbane, leaving us 3-0 down; after barely 11 days of cricket, the five-match series is now a dead rubber. We lost the previous three Ashes series ‘down under’ 5-0, 4-0 and 4-0. Apparently England’s cricket management learned nothing from those reality checks.

The Bazball experiment has just been stress-tested, found wanting, pulverised and buried

And to make it all worse, we’d been told that this tour would be different. Regaining the Ashes was to be the culmination of a project that began in June 2022 when Brendon McCullum took over as coach. He and captain Ben Stokes immediately insisted on a completely new mindset: ‘Bazball’ – aggressive, high-risk cricket played with no fear of the consequences. The batsmen were to go for their shots: even if they failed, they wouldn’t be dropped. It became a team that was very........

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