England's feeble surrender during an hour of madness risks reopening old scars. Their refusal to adapt to conditions was alarming - we could be in for a long tour, writes LAWRENCE BOOTH

It was an hour that changed the game, and possibly – even at this early juncture – the series. And it was an hour that raised urgent questions about England’s ability to learn from their errors with sufficient speed to compete in these Ashes.

At 65 for one after lunch on the second day of the first Test, they led by 105, and had Australia by the short and curlies. In the blink of an eye, they were 88 for six, fighting for their lives.

And less than five and a half hours after that, they were trying to absorb an eight-wicket defeat, having been pummelled all round Perth by Travis Head, who out-Bazballed the Bazballers during his sensational 69-ball hundred.

Whichever way you sliced or diced it, this was a capitulation for the ages, leaving Ben Stokes a whiter shade of pale as he tried to assess the significance of England’s 14th defeat out of 16 on these shores since the 2010-11 triumph under Andrew Strauss.

None of the previous 13, though, had been quite as harrowing as this, or offered so dramatic a reversal of fortune. Not since 1921 has an Ashes Test finished in two days. Not since 1904 have England been dismissed twice in a Test for less than the 67.3 overs they lasted here.

The fans who had travelled thousands of miles to watch their team, and had spent Friday night singing happy songs in Perth’s pubs, ended up witnessing a defeat of historic proportions. How on earth did it happen?

The hour of madness had begun when Ben Duckett edged Scott Boland low to second slip, having been outmanoeuvred by a bowler who in the first innings he had successfully hit off his line.

It wasn’t an especially bad shot and, besides, worse was to come. Far worse. At 76 for two, England were still in control, only for Ollie Pope to edge one of the many drives he had aimed unsuccessfully at Boland.

It was a wasteful way to go for a player who had missed a leg-stump half-volley in the first innings after battling to 46, and had now done the hard yards again en route to 33. Senior players ought to know how to cash in. Pope flunked the test twice.

Out walked Harry Brook, whose first-innings half-century remained the knock of the match until Head eclipsed him as Australia raced to their target of 205 inside 29 overs. Now, though, he declined to reacquaint himself with the conditions, aiming a loose drive on the up at his third ball and picking out Usman Khawaja in the slips.

And Australian joy was unconfined when Joe Root, having avoided the ignominy of a pair, chopped Starc on to his stumps as he played with the kind of crooked bat that is supposed to be banned on the bouncier pitches in this part of the world.

Three wickets in six balls, and the cream of England’s middle order gone, just like that – all to strokes that come with warning signs in Australian conditions.

Stokes, in fairness, got another good delivery from the rampant Starc, completing an hour from hell that left England 88 for six, and persuaded Australia this game was theirs for the taking.

Later, Stokes insisted that the players who had chanced their arm by trying to hit the bowlers off their most dangerous length were the ones who succeeded: Brook on Friday, Head on Saturday.

But, to pull that off, you need to possess either Brook’s remarkable hand-eye coordination, or Head’s counter-attacking nous and familiarity with the conditions. And, for all Root’s class, the rest of England’s line-up have neither.

If the message from Stokes and Brendon McCullum is that England must recommit to their hard-hitting principles, even on pitches that have more life in them than anything they play on at home, then we could be in for a long tour. Or a short one, depending on how you look at it.

Amid the dissection of England’s middle order, it was easy to overlook the fact that Zak Crawley had twice fallen for a duck in the opening over to Starc, completing the first pair by an England opener since Mike Atherton in Johannesburg 26 years ago.

So low are the expectations of a player whose standing in the dressing-room often seems in inverse proportion to his reputation among the public, that no one batted an eyelid – except to admire Starc’s brilliantly athletic return catch from the fifth ball of England’s second innings after Crawley prodded at one for no obvious reason other than the desire to feel bat on ball.

England will stick with him, despite his increasingly untenable Test average of 31. And in so doing they will hand a gift to critics who regard the management’s loyalty to their opener as symptomatic of a wider malaise, one in which the Bazballers’ heads remain in the sand, impervious to reality.

That would overstate the case. Their demolition of Australia’s first innings offered genuine optimism that England’s coterie of fast bowlers can make a series of it, and at lunch on the second day there was only one team in this Test.

But the surrender that followed reopened old scars, and hinted at a refusal to adapt to circumstance – precisely the charge that dogged this team when they lost the Ashes Test at Lord’s in 2023 amid a flurry of harebrained hooks.

It is a tricky balance, no doubt. England can’t suddenly dispense with the attitude that has informed the past three and a half years under Stokes and McCullum. Then again, if the definition of madness really is repeating the same mistake and expecting a different outcome, the meltdown on the second and final afternoon in Perth felt like Exhibit A.

With four Tests still to come, England have time to turn things around. Whether they have the inclination is another matter altogether.