England aren't whitewashed but will leave Australia with nothing but deja-vu

Not the neoteric whitewash, then, but simply a good old-fashioned spanking. England will slip to a 4-0 series defeat in Sydney on Monday – spoiler alert! – the same scoreline by which they lost here in 1958-59. Then, as now, an Australian team written off as little better than ordinary in advance of the series was elevated to surprising heights on the back of an inspirational captain (Richie Benaud) and a battery of young, aggressive fast bowlers.

England, by contrast, fielded an unsatisfactory mix of young players still finding their way in Test cricket, established players struggling for form and a few legends of the game who were some years past their best. It is a paradigm worth bearing in mind when this series finally ends and the bloodletting and introspection truly begins in earnest.

You could, perhaps, glimpse the outline of just such a reckoning when assistant coach Paul Farbrace strode in at the close of play on day four to offer his thoughts. The sign of Farbrace being deployed for media duties rather than a player is generally the emblem of a bad day at the office. And once more, England had had a shocker.

“In many ways, the last few days have summed up our trip,” Farbrace said. “It’s been exceptionally tough. They’ve kept the pressure on us at all times. But the one thing we’ve talked about is making sure we keep fighting. Because sometimes, when you’re out-skilled, all you can do is keep scrapping.”

The choice of words there – “out-skilled” – was both telling and correct. Australia have not been better prepared or better funded than England. They have not been more fortunate with injuries. They have lost four tosses out of five. They have dropped more catches. And yet, by adapting to conditions better, identifying the key passages of play and seizing them, they are about to romp to a fourth comfortable victory.

“A series like this does expose issues in your team,” Farbrace admitted. “And we have a choice. You either churn out some positive stuff. Or we be honest and say that there are certain areas that are not good enough. Everybody needs to look very closely and ask if we have got the right people in the right places, and if we are doing the right things.”

It was frank, forthright stuff, and commendable for that, yet still at least two Tests too late. As recently as the build-up to this match, England were continuing to indulge the delusion that they would have been competitive in this series had it not been for Steve Smith. As recently as Melbourne, they were telling themselves and us that the plans were right, the strategy was right, they were doing all the right things, just not for long enough.

Only now does the stark reality appear to have dawned on England: that man for man, they are simply not as good as Australia. Had they grasped that talent deficit much earlier – and to many, it was apparent as early as Adelaide – they might have tailored their tactics accordingly. They might have cultivated the plucky, backs-to-the-wall underdog mentality that could have given them a better chance.

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Instead, they tried to do what very few teams have ever succeeded in doing here: bowling long and dry containing spells, ticking over with the bat, trying to attrit Australia rather than blowing them apart. What might an alternative have looked like? Certainly shorter spells for the bowlers – a tactic used to good effect in Brisbane and then inexplicably discarded – would have helped focus minds and energy. Too often England were left with enfeebled bowlers running in on fumes with increasingly eclectic fields. The failure of Moeen Ali to maintain control was clearly a factor here.

England could have been more aggressive against Nathan Lyon – only Joe Root and Dawid Malan have really looked to throw him off his length – and more aggressive with the bat in general, an approach that might have yielded more in game-changing momentum than what it would have cost in wickets. After all, when a boxer is up against a superior opponent, they know the waiting game is futile. They have to go for the knockout.

The good thing is that these are the sorts of conversations that England finally look like they are about to have. “We’re always looking at how we can improve,” Farbrace said. “But the key is how honest you are with the conversations you have. Sometimes those conversations have to be brutally honest.

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“There’s no point me sitting here chatting about some nice periods of play. Nice periods of play and brief glimpses do not win you Test matches, and they certainly don’t win you Test series in a place like this. And if England are serious about coming back here and winning in four years’ time, the planning needs to start in the next couple of days.”

Not all of this lot will still be around in four years. James Vince may not be around in four weeks, having failed once more in exactly the same fashion. Lyon predicted that Australia would “end some careers” this winter, and Vince’s may be the first, even if ironically he is the only England batsman not to be dismissed by Lyon all series.

“There’s no doubt that James Vince needs to score more runs if he’s going to play international cricket for England,” Farbrace said. “He’s had some decent starts, shown some glimpses, and we all think: ‘Crikey, this could be the innings’. But there comes a time when ‘this could be the innings’ has to stop, and it’s got to be hundreds. The blunt answer is: he knows he has to score more runs if he’s going to have a future with England.”

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Mark Stoneman will probably get a tour of New Zealand, but has not really looked the same batsman since his working over by Josh Hazlewood in Perth. Once those doubts begin to fester, they can often be hard to banish. Counting in his favour is the lack of viable alternatives, the fact that Trevor Bayliss is a big fan, and the fact that very few international teams have the capacity to test his technique against the short ball as thoroughly as Australia have here. If he scores runs in New Zealand, he could have a fruitful career.

But in many ways, quibbles over personnel are the easiest part of this exercise. It is the fundamental, structural questions that need to be addressed now. Why is county cricket producing so few 90mph fast bowlers and match-winning spin bowlers? Why do England occasionally look like they have never seen a Kookaburra before? Why are so many of this country’s most talented cricketers playing white-ball cricket only? Does it matter that eight of this England side went to private school? What does it say about England’s well-funded development pathway when their last three batting debutants have been 30, 28 and 29? And why should we have any confidence at all in the decisions being made or the people making them when these are exactly the same conversations we were having four years ago, and some of them seven years before that?

England shouldn’t necessarily be winning in Australia on a regular basis. Nobody’s demanding that. But even in the absurdly grim 1990s, when they were up against Waughs and Warne, McGrath and Ponting, they generally managed to leave with something. Here, barring the unlikeliest of miracles, they are set to leave with nothing but a pervading feeling of deja-vu: the sense that history, like a bad curry, is fated to repeat itself.