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Brendon McCullum despised the moniker Bazball since it was coined, viewing it as reductive and maybe anticipating how it might be used as a weapon down the line. Right now, down 2-0 in an Test series in Australia that began with high hopes, it has turned into the subject of Australian jokes.

However McCullum has not helped himself either. After the crushing defeat at the Gabba, his insistence that, if anything, England were 'over-prepared' prior to the day-night Test was like trying to put out a bin fire with petrol. It could become his epitaph as England head coach if performances do not take an upturn.

In a way, you almost have to admire his commitment to the bit. While McCullum claims to ignore outside criticism, he must have been all too aware of an England team increasingly characterised as carefree and lacking preparation.

The truth, as always, is more nuanced. England enjoy golf just as much during their necessary down time as their rivals and they practice equally hard. Before the Gabba Test, they did more, logging five days to Australia's three, given their limited experience to the pink Kookaburra ball and the changes in lighting conditions.

The Question of Preparation and Training

McCullum's point about being "over-prepared" was that those five extra days were his decision – the instance he wavered in his conviction that minimal preparation is best. It meant a Test match's worth of mental energy was expended before they even stepped out in the intensity of Australia's fortress. While nets are a opportunity to refine technique, they can also become a safety blanket; zero consequence activity that mainly maintains the reactions quick.

Fixtures are congested such that warm-up matches against state sides were not possible (and uncertain value, when you consider England playing three before the whitewash in 2013-14). More difficult to justify is the dismissal of county championship cricket as a worthwhile exercise more broadly, evidenced by Jacob Bethell's unproductive season.

Match Deficiencies and Strategic Lack of Evolution

Only playing hardens cricketers for the many situations they walk out to face, and it is in this area where England have so far been found lacking. The issue is not just with the bat – harrowing as some of the decision-making has been – but an attack that seems without a spearhead. None has shown the persistence or discipline that the exceptional Australian paceman and his support cast have delivered.

The coach's unconventional approach was freeing during its initial year, an effective, well diagnosed remedy to shake off the torpor that came before. The disappointment now comes in how it has apparently not evolved past that point – the lack of an second phase to the original software that has seen form taper off to an even record from their most recent matches.

Player Focus and Team Decisions

One such player is the wicketkeeper-batter, a gifted player, no question, but one who is being mercilessly targeted on each side of the bat and has dropped two crucial opportunities as wicketkeeper. The situation is not aided when your opposite number, the Australian keeper, has just produced a virtuoso performance.

Based on McCullum's comments in the aftermath, England appear set to persist with Smith in Adelaide. The hope – similar to the broader situation – is that a return to a traditional Test setting unleashes his top form, with Perth's bouncy pitch and the unfamiliar floodlit Test now out of the way.

The alternative is to enact the plan discovered during the victorious series in New Zealand 12 months ago by moving the batsman down to his preferred position as a busy middle order player, giving him the wicketkeeping duties, and picking a fresh face at first drop. Bethell made some runs for the Lions recently, or perhaps Will Jacks could fulfil a comparable function to the former spinner in 2023.

Ultimately, these changes is ideal, with Australia's superior basics having destroyed expectations and pushed the broader philosophy into the spotlight.