Test cricket’s next challenge: how to avoid yet another lop-sided Ashes series

On what was supposed to be the day after the Hobart Test, all was quiet. England had wrapped up an epochally anaemic Ashes defeat leaving enough spare days to squeeze in an embarrassing visit from police to the world’s meekest sunrise rager, telling off cricketers who had been drinking in their whites for longer than they had been required to play in them. The constabulary arrived to extinguish a cigar sparked by England staffer Graham Thorpe, who then decided to video the players present.

It ended up at a newspaper within a day. As batting coach of a team that had just been bowled out for 147, 192, 185, 68, 188 and 124, among other embarrassments, you for one thing might be short cigar-worthy moments, and for another might be inclined to keep your head down.

But no. That’s not the way for England. Head coach Chris Silverwood will try to hang on, despite being made sole selector a year ago and getting every team wrong since. Director of cricket Ashley Giles, one of those complex administrative jobs that apparently former Test cricketers are uniquely qualified to occupy, will try to hang on. Chief executive Tom Harrison will try to hang on – like his Australian counterpart James Sutherland after the sandpaper scandal, spruiking that his regime is uniquely suited to fix the problems it has spent years ignoring or exacerbating. And Joe Root, fine man, fine player, uninspired captain, will stay on, because everybody else’s batting is worse than his leadership.

With a day or two for the head to clear, it is hard to know what to make of the Ashes. The needs of marketing demand that it be presented as the great rivalry, the biggest of the big, the two oldest teams in one of the few five-Test series remaining on the calendar.