England’s Ashes campaign may have been doomed from the off but there are still objective standards of competence
![England founder but even on a sinking ship the chairs can be arranged correctly | Barney Ronay](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/34cd3c6df6b7edba2222a0b8b0421aa8c7982b69/0_105_3068_1840/master/3068.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=6ba010ce653d55567995c06533c759b1)
Clang. Bring out your dead. There was something a little ghoulish about the spectacle down the wires from Adelaide as England’s last-wicket pair attempted to push the second Ashes Test into its final knockings on day five.
An
Australian Ashes summer always has a strangeness about it seen from 10,000 miles away: those bleached-out greens and blues bounced around the world and beamed into the depths of a northern winter. Watching James Anderson and Stuart Broad fence and fend at the teeth-and-toes assault of the 6ft 6in, 92mph Mitchell Starc, it was hard to avoid the feeling of something hollow-eyed and ghostly; an emblem of the ill health of this tour but also of the wider entropy of English red-ball
Cricket, a grief that really is going to have to be processed at some point.