OLIVER HOLT: England’s weak men have failed Ben Stokes – they melted like ice cream in the Adelaide sun on the day Bazball lost its nerve, its reputation and the Ashes

The day that Bazball lost its nerve, and lost its reputation, dawned in the grip of cloying, oppressive heat. England fans, still clothed in the forlorn hope of a fightback that never came, walked down King William Road and across the City Bridge over the River Torrens, already tugging at their shirts and mopping sweat from their brows.

Soon, the thermometer climbed above 30 degrees. It would hit 40 early in the afternoon. By the time England came out to start their first innings, around 11am, most supporters were sheltering on the stadium concourses. A wind blew in off the ocean. It made the Adelaide Oval feel like a giant fan oven.

Inside it, this once proud, confident, bullish England team that had swaggered into Australia a few short weeks ago eager to confront its biggest test and impose its ultra-aggressive form of cricket on its hosts, was poached, boiled, grilled, seared, sauteed, flambeed and, finally, charred, until it had lost all form.

Part of the reason there has been so much dismay, and anger, about what has happened here is that so much was expected of this England team.

The discrepancy between expectation and reality has been a wide gulf. It has started to feel like a humiliation, both for players and supporters.

At the close of play, only the captain, Ben Stokes, and the team’s best bowler, Jofra Archer, were left on the deck, locked together in a defiant stand that had yielded 45 runs, wrestling defiantly with the knowledge that all hope of regaining the Ashes appeared to have been devoured by the flames of the furnace.

Stokes looked close to broken. This was a brutally chastening day for the England captain. As he surveyed the wreckage of the bold project that he had masterminded with coach Brendon McCullum, he saw, too, the shadows of the players in whom he had invested all his hopes and who have, almost all of them, let him down.

‘Australia is no place for weak men,’ Stokes had said after England lost the Second Test in Brisbane and after what happened here on Thursday, he will know that too many of the men who accompanied him on this quest are weak men.

They are weak men whose characters melted like ice cream in the South Australia sun.

They are weak men who turned and ran when the going got tough. They are weak men who talked big when the task was less daunting only to be savagely exposed by a well-drilled, talented, experienced, disciplined, teak-tough team such as Australia. 

They are weak men who left their captain alone, once more, fighting and fighting as his batsmen fell around him.

Whatever happens in the rest of this Test and this series, the second day of the Adelaide Test will be the one that pains Stokes the most. Partly, that was physical pain.

Cooking in the middle for hours in the heat, Stokes could barely move by stumps. He was paralysed by cramp and unable to digest carbohydrates because he felt so sick and dehydrated.

At the last drinks break, he knelt on the pitch, a cold towel draped over him, his head bowed towards the turf as staff tried to help him take on fluids. Archer stood over him, patting him gently on the back, trying to encourage him, perhaps trying to comfort him.

Because what will have caused Stokes more discomfort than the heat was the defenestration of Bazball that he witnessed throughout the day.

England were outplayed comprehensively by Australia, as they have been for most of this series, but they could not even take comfort in the idea that they were staying true to their principles.

Sure, Ollie Pope and Jamie Smith threw their wickets away carelessly and stupidly, but too many of the others went out with a whimper, as if they had lost faith not just in themselves but in the philosophy to which they have sworn allegiance these past few years.

Right at the end, when they had sworn so often that they would not change, they changed. And they failed anyway.

They failed in a way that may be marginally more acceptable to the purists who have been offended by their aggression but they failed like a team that has finally succumbed to public opinion and to the tyranny of compromise.

By the close, Stokes had scored a dogged, determined, attritional, courageous 45 runs from 151 balls. He had been hit on the side of the helmet by a vicious bouncer from Mitchell Starc, he had fought dehydration and sickness, he had been hobbled by crippling cramp, he had fried in the heat.

His presence carries the memory of miracles but this feels beyond him.

Stokes is our Sisyphus. He rolls the boulder of the England cricket team up and up that hill and then almost everyone else – let’s exempt Archer and Joe Root from this – leaps out of the way and watches it roll back down again.

This is not new. This is dispiritingly familiar cycle. More often than not, an England cricket team comes to Australia and loses 5-0.

Occasionally, it is 4-1. Or 4-0. Very occasionally – once in the last 38 years – England comes to Australia and wins.

That is not going to happen here. The Ashes are almost gone for another two years. 

Thursday in Adelaide felt like witnessing a lot more than the turning point in a match. It felt like watching the end of an idea.