Stuart Broad is an effective agent provocateur because he jabs at real sore points. Broad launched the phoney Ashes war last month when he said this was England’s best Ashes team since it trampled all over Australia in 2010-11 and Australia’s worst since then. It’s true that the runes read so surprisingly well for England that even Josh Hazlewood was moved to pay a compliment to their batting, and ominously poorly for a conspicuously unsettled Australia.

All the signs except one. For all their boldness, bluster and bravado entering this and previous tours, England find it diabolically hard to win in Australia. Hard to win a series, hard to win even one Test in a series.

England have a history of underperformance in Australia.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis

The exception that proves the rule is the maverick rubber of 2010-11. Daniel Brettig noted in these pages recently that Australia then was riven by destructive undercurrents and was so panicked at selection that it thought a left-arm spinner with a 40-plus average would spook Kevin Pietersen – he did not.

Excluding that series, England have won only one other Test match in Australia this century. That was a dead rubber in Sydney in 2003 when Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath were both invalided out of the Australian team. Four years later, as Australia romped towards a whitewash, rueful England captain Andrew Strauss reflected on his team’s high-flown pre-series ambition and said plaintively: “We just want to win a game in........

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