Matt Maher: England's Ashes defeat must be treated as the major failure it really is

It’s the way, you suspect, Brendon McCullum might argue it. It’s the way you fear ECB chiefs Richard Gould and Richard Thompson, due to meet Down Under this week to begin picking over the bones of another Ashes away defeat, might be convinced to see it, not least if England were to win again and add another gleam of respectability to the final scoreline.

A 3-2 defeat is clearly preferable to 4-1 or 5-0 and the value of Test wins in Australia should not be downplayed, even if they are achieved after the series has already been decided.

Such was the hunger of the home side to achieve another whitewash, their two-day defeat in Melbourne last week was met with anger and embarrassment in many quarters.

Yet from an England point of view, there is also something instructive in such a reaction. It’s not the sort you would expect, if we are being brutally honest, were the situation reversed with England the ones to slip-up with a home series already secured. 

One suspects we’d quickly brush it off, declaring the contest a meaningless dead rubber. It may say something about the current outlooks of both Australian and English cricket, one where winning is everything and the other where it is preferred but sometimes, you wonder, not completely essential.

Last summer’s 2-2 draw with India, for example, was largely painted as a great advert for Test cricket, rather than the huge missed opportunity for an England series victory it actually was.

It was a similar story two years earlier when Australia last visited, with the end of series focus falling mainly on England’s impressive character in fighting back to draw and bad luck with the weather, rather than the dire tactics and poor play which had put them 2-0 down in the first place.

A 4-1 defeat in India the following winter, meanwhile, was largely written off because it is “hard to win” on the subcontinent. Maybe so, if you’re England, yet New Zealand and South Africa have both managed it the past couple of years. Seen in that context, England’s two most recent series with India look like big missed opportunities.

It is the same in Australia now and why any attempt to paint a 3-2 defeat - were England to win in Sydney - as proof there is nothing wrong with the current regime a few minor tweaks wouldn’t solve, should be swiftly dismissed.

The fact is England have again, when it really mattered, been found sorely lacking.

This, after all, was the series everything had been building toward over the last four years, the defining moment of the Bazball era when all the rough edges of England’s approach would be ironed out. It will be alright on the night, we were told.

Instead, what was in all reality England’s best chance to win an away Ashes series for more than a decade was lost in just 11 days. Only a belated rearguard action in Adelaide prevented it from being a record-breaking defeat. For the first three Tests, the tour was a shambles. 

That was even before the ECB had to launch an investigation into the “stag do” which took place between the second and third Tests. Pleasing though it was, victory in Melbourne only moved the tour’s direction of travel from unmitigated disaster to huge disappointment.

Clearly, not all of the blame can be placed at the door of McCullum, or even his long-time champion, managing director Rob Key.

There are longstanding structural issues with English cricket which only those higher up at the ECB can solve, such as putting some value back into the County Championship, the supposed breeding ground of Test cricketers which continues to be pushed into the boundaries of the summer. 

It is not the job of Key or McCullum to incentivise the production of spin bowlers. For all the frustrations of this Ashes series, there has been a general sense Australia, despite some notable absentees, simply have a stronger pool of players. Such issues extend well beyond one coaching regime.

Yet even working on the basis a coach can only control what they can control, there remain serious questions as to whether McCullum really has extracted everything he possibly could from the squad at his disposal? 

There is no doubt he is popular with the players. Or at least, those which matter. Ben Stokes was the latest to come to McCullum’s defence yesterday.

"I can't see there being someone else who could take this team from where we are now to even bigger heights,” said the skipper.

Sorry, bigger heights than what exactly? Losing the Ashes in three Tests? Just how low are we setting the bar now?

There’s always a danger of reading too much into things players say in press conferences but it isn’t the first time on this tour Stokes has tried to project a reality not matched by the results of the past 18 months.

McCullum’s best attribute is said to be as a motivator and an ability to make players feel as confident as they can possibly be.

But somewhere along the line, you still have to work on the basics. Through the first three Tests of this series the story was of the same players making the same mistakes, over and again. It was of a team which looked ill-prepared, not only for the challenge of facing Australia on their own patch but the essential skills of the sport, such as fielding. 

Whatever the outcome of the inevitable review into the latest Ashes failure, the ECB must at the very least subject the head coach and his methods to a scrutiny which has previously been lacking.