Jos Buttler not fussed by a series defeat? Take that as a red flag on fixture overkill | Andy Bull

Can international cricket stay relevant with dead rubbers cropping up all over a dead-rubber logjam of a schedule?

If you were listening carefully you might just have learned the answer to an ancient riddle in Melbourne, where Australia finished off their whitewash of England in the Contractual Obligation one-day international series on Tuesday. They won the third game by 221 runs, the largest ODI defeat in England’s history. A record, then, and not the game’s only one. There were 10,406 paying spectators in the ground, the smallest recorded audience for an Australia one-day game at the MCG.

It turns out a team falling down when there’s no one around to hear it do still make a sound and it’s something like Jos Buttler’s maudlin after-match interview. “I’m not fussed at all about the results, to be honest,” he said.