“Any chance of getting a refund on the next three, boys?” bellowed a man in canary yellow shirt towards a group of England fans at the Gabba. They do love to stick it to the old country in this part of the world, albeit this exchange actually occurred early on day three of the second Test.
The worst, it transpired, was still to come. Pushed into an interrogation under lights by Mitchell Starc’s stone-cold 141-ball 77 from number nine, England collapsed under questioning – the kind of late session implosion that means the Ashes urn is unlikely to be changing hands this year.
Even the word “unlikely” is a nod to the fact that, in nearly 150 years of Test cricket, a 2-0 deficit has been overcome once before; that it still remains mathematically possible. The way the first five days of this series have played out – the way Starc has taken residence in English minds and painted the walls
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