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 the Ashes by winning the last three matches in the series. But coming from 2-0 down against

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