England are flying blind in this dizzying Ashes tour with no real conviction or composure

There have been worse England teams, more extrinsically shambolic England teams. But it is hard to think of an England team that knows itself less thoroughly than this one

England have been hindered by questionable judgement, inadequate solutions and poor decisions both on and off the pitch (Getty)

One of the toughest tests for new pilots is the point at which they fly into thick cloud for the first time. With no visibility and no horizon to guide them, they are supposed to rely entirely on their instruments, and yet often this is easier said than done. Entirely devoid of visual markers, they will make a small adjustment that feels right. Then another. Then another.

When you’re up in the clouds, you see, the usual rules of motion, sensation and inertia do not apply. A plane can bank, climb, roll and dip without anybody on board being any the wiser. You’re floating on air, and who cares what air, and in what direction? And so occasionally, it's said, trainee pilots will end up flying out of clouds with their planes entirely upside down.

Which brings us to the England cricket team, most of whom have been in Australia for around six weeks now. Touring is one of those strange lifestyles that you can never quite grasp until you have done it. It is designed almost to eliminate the slightest need for forethought or decision-making acumen, your every waking minute drowned in a litany of contradictions: working but not working, in touch but out of touch, surrounded by people you both know very well and not really at all, striving towards a short-term goal whilst mentally settling in for the long haul. In the dead spaces, with no visual cues to help them, perspective evaporates. Small incidents can seem momentous. A guy pouring beer on somebody else’s head can suddenly seem like the most monstrous thing in the world.

Aha; at last, the point emerges. For as the travelling vaudeville circus that is ambitiously disguising itself as England’s 2017-18 Ashes defence rolls into Perth ahead of the crucial third Test on Thursday, it is impossible to escape the sense that in one way or another, this is a tour and a group of men that have collectively lost sight of their horizon. Cut loose from the solid certainties of their lives at home, the cricket they want to play, the culture and structures that helped them play it, England have regressed into a sort of larval formlessness: grasping at their own shadows, endlessly tweaking, endlessly re-tweaking, confounded by their inability to face the right way.

It is tempting to separate England’s off-field antics - the Ben Stokes punch, the Jonny Bairstow “head-butt”, the latest incident involving Ben Duckett and the decanting of some beer - from their on-field performance, in which England have been outplayed but not yet disgraced. In fact, both probably stem from the same root cause: a combination of the peculiar and disorienting gravity of long cricket tours, plus a team culture that has long since mislaid its capacity to generate sound judgement.

I should probably clarify: we’re not really talking about a drinking culture here. Today’s players drink far less than those of old. Alcohol is, in many ways, the red herring here. Harold Larwood used to demand a pint during drinks breaks. David Gower and Ian Botham would think nothing of knocking back a few bottles of plonk on the eve of a big game. By contrast, pouring a drink over James Anderson’s head seems like pretty small chips, even if The Independent understands that some players may unwisely have been out until as late as 4am that night.

No, the unsound judgement here belongs to England’s management, who in banning Duckett from the rest of the tour, but refusing to send him home, encapsulate the addled double-vision that has characterised their approach to disciplinary issues on this tour. It is an absurd punishment for what was described by coach Trevor Bayliss as a “trivial” offence, and somehow it is impossible to escape the sense that Duckett is being punished, at least in part, for what Stokes did on the other side of the world more than two months ago.

Trevor Bayliss described the offence as 'trivial' (Getty)

This has been the problem all tour: trivial incidents that have nonetheless been handled with the maximum fuss. Bairstow’s head-butt - an event “blown out of all proportion”, according to Root, Andrew Strauss and Bairstow himself - was nonetheless serious enough to warrant Bairstow being hauled in front of the media to read out a hastily-prepared statement, and a midnight curfew being imposed on the entire squad. It was a sanction that raised the question of whether, if the incident was so blown out of proportion, it was England who had been doing much of the blowing.

And these are exactly the same symptoms that have been exhibited on the field: questionable judgement, inadequate solutions, poor decisions. Decisions taken without reference points, on the hoof, on the run, which I suppose is where England have been ever since the Stokes news broke. James Vince’s airy drive on the fourth evening at Adelaide. Pouring a pint over a team-mate’s head. Playing three left-handers in a row in the middle order when Nathan Lyon is ripping it miles. Going back to the same Perth bar where the Bairstow incident happened. Different decisions made in different moments, but all lyrics from the same Christmas carol.

What needs to be said is that there is a reason this is known as the toughest tour for an English cricketer, not simply for its cricketing standard but for its length. The five-match series is an increasingly rare phenomenon in Test cricket, and in the past 15 years only England (in Australia 2010-11 and South Africa 2004-05) have managed to win one away from home. It is why England will still be favourites in 2019, whatever happens here. Australia’s players have been able to avoid the cabin fever of touring life simply by going home in between Test matches to see their families. That will be England’s luxury next time. Meanwhile, it will be the Australians trapped in their bubble, unanchored and alone, stewing in their own neurotic soup.

Joe Root's men are lost without having lost - just yet (Getty)

Many catastrophic failures, be they car accidents, plane crashes or relationship breakdowns, occur not from one large blunder but an accumulation of many minor ones: a series of overreactions, each a correction to the last, each warping and fracturing the larger picture until it is no longer visible. You're in the fog, in the clouds, no longer tethered to anything you recognise, the beginning too distant to be remembered, the end too distant to be relevant. What you think is good sense is more often just blind instinct.

How, then, might England have played things differently? So, so many ways. They might have offered some clarity on the Stokes mess much, much earlier. They might have given Vince a chance to earn his place over the summer rather than chucking him into an Ashes series cold. They might have exposed the Bairstow incident as the utter frippery it was by giving it the silence it deserved, which would have made it easier for them to do the same for Duckett.

More generally, you just wish this England management had shown a little backbone, a little basic principle, the conviction to draw a line in the sand, the constitution to say: “this is what we believe in, this is how we do things, and like it or lump it, we’re sticking to it”.

Instead, they have allowed their heightened, rarefied emotions - misplaced pride? stinging betrayal? simple exasperation? - to hold sway. This is a team who, unfortunately, no longer know what they’re supposed to be doing, except for the fact that they should probably be doing something, or perhaps not.

There have been worse England teams, worse-behaved England teams, more extrinsically shambolic England teams. But it is hard to think of an England team that knows itself less thoroughly. They have not yet lost. But they are lost, and in many ways that’s worse.