England’s cricketers have just crashed to a second humiliating defeat against Australia, leaving them 2-0 down in the five-match series. With occasional exceptions, we have batted, bowled and fielded atrociously. It was, as Sir Geoffrey Boycott has written in the Telegraph, ‘a horror show’.

England only narrowly avoided an innings defeat, in the end losing this second match by eight wickets – the same massive margin as in the first Test. As I suggested before the series began, on their home turf the Aussies are approximately twice as good as we are: they usually do more in one innings (or one innings and a bit) than we can manage in two.

It’s true that theoretically we could still regain........

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