Mark Wood gives England some cheer amid faults of their own making | Barney Ronay

The problem with England’s bowling is their batting, but poor planning and structural neglect are not helping either

Half an hour into a lovely clear, sunlit Brisbane morning on day two of the first Ashes Test something extraordinary happened. Actually there were two things. The second of these was the commentators on Fox Sports stopped talking. This was a transformative event in itself, like having some painfully lodged object surgically removed from your inner ear: a toothpick, a kebab skewer, an endlessly burbling babel fish who speaks only 1990s Aussie Test great side-mouth pub chat.

In medieval times there was a widespread belief in trepanning, or literally drilling a hole in your skull, to “remove the pressure” of horrendous pre-aspirin headaches. Listening to that unceasing bloke-bantz – the yes-mate, aw-mate, no-mate – this starts to make some kind of sense. Fetch the drill. Please, somebody, just stop that feeling. Maybe this is why England were so bad in the 90s, the sustained mental disintegration of having to listen to the slip cordon chat among themselves. John Crawley was right. Get me out of here.