Will the urn be in Alastair Cook’s gloves by tonight? Britain have each probability of batting on, and on, and on, while Australia will clearly bat a little better second time around. But in this series, anything can occur. Like me, you’re presumably as yet grappling with the way that Australia were bowled out for 60. In the days of yore of Show offs vide-printer during Definite Score, a score line including a bizarrely enormous number of objectives generally had the word composed after the number, in sections, as though to say – indeed, truly. This machine ought to have been tidied off yesterday, to shake us out of doubt.

Australia first innings – 60 full scale (SIXTY).

Britain might have won four of the last six Remains series, and are going to win this one, yet all things being equal, for we who got through every one of the desolations of the years 1989-2002/3, this was a phenomenal snapshot of therapy. Sixty. Sixty! Sixty!! Sixty is a ludicrous score even in a town match. It’s the worst situation imaginable when a wild South Africa stick Bangladesh. Australia weren’t just humiliated; this was embarrassment on a modern scale. They relinquished practically a whole innings.

Indeed, Stuart Expansive bowled very well. Indeed, every scratch went to hand. Indeed, Britain got splendidly. In any case, this was not sixty full scale bowling, nor a sixty hard and fast pitch. Australia batted as flaccidly, as regretfully, and as crudely, as is humanly conceivable.

This was more awful than any Britain batting debacle during even the most earnest long stretches of Australian authority. We were rarely this terrible, and when we were close to as awful, we could fault Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne. This wasn’t Ambrose and Walsh unleashing destruction at Perth, Kingston, or Trinidad. Australia were bowled out for 60 by Stuart Wide at Trent Scaffold. In 111 balls – the most limited first innings in test history. Michael Clarke had dropped himself down to number five to shield himself from the new ball. He wound up confronting the 10th wad of the match.

The hopelessness of 2013/14 actually scrapes the confidence of Britain allies.

Here was reward. Here was recovery. During those long, dull weeks, I composed here that Australia’s victory was an oddity, a blip on the diagram. The group who were pounding Britain contained to a great extent similar players who had lost to them, with changing levels of seriousness, multiple times in succession.

I didn’t then understand – and in reasonableness, few did – how terrible Britain had really become. Not till later did we see the value in the degree to which Andy Blossom’s system had eroded and tainted itself. Just throughout 2014 did the size of Britain’s fall out of favor become completely evident, in spite of the fact that sages more shrewd than me had recognized the indications of rot as soon as 2012.

Had I known then what I know now, I could have examined 2013-14 another way.

However at that point once more, given Australia’s struggles since Master’s, maybe my most memorable intuition was right. Perhaps Australia’s presentation in that series was an oddity: a combination of situation and player-structure which couldn’t be rehashed and which concealed broad underlying shortcoming.

During 2013-14, each time Australia risked their arm, it fell off. Warner sliced and hooked, and tracked down the limit. However, this late spring, against a moving ball, inspiration has transformed into carelessness.