It is an indication of how England's tour of Australia has panned out that, as one-sided thrashings go, the 4-1 one-day series defeat by Australia feels almost like a blow struck for parity. A single dead rubber victory against a weakened team can hardly be cause for anything other than mild consolation but at least under Ashley Giles there has been a sense of this England one-day team learning the odd lesson along the way.
Some obvious weaknesses have been addressed: the top order have been told to up their strike rates; Chris Jordan, who should have bowled at the death in Brisbane, did get to bowl at the death in Adelaide, and did so very well; and above all the kind of cricketer Giles would like ideally to bring to Australia for the World Cup has been quite clearly identified. England's coach values boldness and clarity of thought, with Eoin Morgan's uncluttered approach in this series a rallying point for how, in time, he would like this team to play.
With this in mind it is tempting to wonder what kind of debrief England's one day player of the year Ravi Bopara can expect after his innings in Adelaide on Sunday night. Bopara scraped his way to two off 20 balls, before threatening to get moving towards the death and being dismissed without at any stage having taken on the bowling, or even attempted the couple of clean blows that would have won the match.
"On reflection we could be sitting here having won the series. There are a lot of should haves, could haves but we missed a key opportunity in Brisbane," Giles said after a sleepless night mulling the details of another last-ditch defeat.
"We outplayed them and didn't get over the line. We can continue to talk about building towards the World Cup, and there have been some really positive signs, but we have to start winning games. Guys have to start taking responsibility."
Bopara did attempt to take responsibility, "taking it deep" as England are fond of doing, and then falling to an excellent ball and a freakish deflection off Matthew Wade's chest, albeit while playing another fiddly wait-and-see shot. It was notable that much of the talk in Australia at the end of the series was of the impact of James Faulkner, who has twice aggressively affected the outcome – in Adelaide and Brisbane – when a match was there to be won. Faulkner does not so much take it deep as simply try to take it, trusting to his own explosive talent with the bat and his variations with the ball.
"It was a tricky situation," Giles said. "A lot has been said about Ravi's cricket but I can only go on what he has played during my time as coach and he has been very good for the side. In the Champions Trophy he did well and OK at the end of our summer. He struggled on this tour with the bat and that can happen but he is a very useful cricketer. The situation he went in, we had just lost a couple of quick wickets. The two guys were in and suddenly he was put under the pump a bit. We know it was not easy on this wicket to start playing your shots. In the end he could have been a hero but it was one of the strangest dismissals I have ever seen in my life.
Asked if he would raise with Bopara the timing and tempo of his innings Giles played a dead bat.
"We won't just let it go because we always discuss this stuff with players and the team," he said. "Ravi will be disappointed because he has not had the best series with the bat but with all these guys we try to build and move forward. We all have hard decisions to make. I saw Alastair Cook this morning and it is quite exciting because we have had guys come in like Jordan who have added to the side and added to the squad. Ben Stokes has over the last two series as well so there might be some tough selection decisions."