Harry Brook has been failed by Brendon McCullum and the England management

Brendon McCullum, now the head coach of England’s Test and white-ball sides, has been silent since the day the Sydney Test ended and England’s tour finished in a 4-1 defeat.

England have come to play on and off the field in the style, not of their captain Ben Stokes, but of their head coach: liberated in the first instance, now full of bravado, even machismo.

McCullum was last heard saying that England had applied to use the WACA ground in Perth for practice ahead of the series – but was not pressed into admitting that England had applied far too late.

Rob Key, meanwhile, as England’s director of cricket, and the ECB as a whole, have let Brook make three public statements, admitting an ever deeper degree of guilt, and take all the flak.

As a 26-year-old with talent to burn, which he did throughout the Ashes series, Brook needs wiser guidance than he has been receiving.

Key himself should be under scrutiny for being loose with the truth having said that “no formal action” had been taken against any players in relation to that evening in Wellington prior to the full story emerging.

Results should be allowed to speak for themselves, and they accuse this England management of being ever less effective. At the start of their brave new world – though bravado might be more operative than brave – England won ten of their first 11 Tests. Since then the scoreline has been 16 Tests won and 16 lost, and two of those wins were against Ireland and Zimbabwe.

This absence of growth is also to be seen on an individual level. Ben Duckett went backwards in the Ashes, as did Jamie Smith. Zak Crawley always averages 31. Ben Stokes goes forwards as a bowler, backwards as a batsman (he has just one century in his last 26 Tests).

Brook himself continues to play “shocking shots”, as he himself phrased it during the Ashes, while Joe Root alone of the established Test batsmen seems to be growing. Josh Tongue and arguably Brydon Carse are the bowlers improving but nobody is shaping up as a leader.

What sort of dressing-room culture is this where growth is stunted? It is too early to say whether Jacob Bethell will be allowed to fulfil his prodigious talent, and he too has been referred to the Cricket Regulator for drinking in Wellington the night before that game, along with Tongue, who had not been selected.

It is a dressing-room, it seems, where only yes-men are admitted. McCullum recruits coaches from the ranks of New Zealand players whom he has captained, so they can be guaranteed not to challenge him: Tim Southee, the pace bowling coach who turned up for the first Test of the last Ashes series then disappeared; Jeetan Patel, the spin-bowling consultant, whose charges took seven expensive wickets in the Ashes series; and the rugby guru Gilbert Enoka, of whom ever less was heard as England lost the Ashes in 11 playing days.

And nothing that England can do in white-ball cricket, even winning the T20 World Cup, can make up for the fact that they failed to prepare competently for the last Ashes series, and let themselves and all their supporters down.

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