There’s a finality about it. It’s like some kind of extreme unction when they start agreeing with the doomsayers. But the diagnosis is always the same. People blame Smith for his captaincy, the selectors for making poor choices, the batsmen for adhering doggedly to silly notions of “playing their own game” regardless of conditions.

The failures of the Australian Test team in Perth, and earlier, in Sri Lanka, are failures of technique and preparation. The problem is systemic. It has nothing to do with selectors. They make do with the materials they have, and new materials might not serve them any better. The fact that Glen Maxwell has proved he can get first-class runs doesn’t mean he’s the all-rounder Australia is looking for. Replacing Mitch Marsh with another all-rounder is probably not the answer. His part-time spin is barely international standard. They blame Smith for his misuse of Nathan Lyon, but at the time he came on, the Proteas had their tails up and were boldly stepping out, knowing an offie would get little deviation.

At the moment, Australia looks like a team relying on the vestiges of Test-match talent it has, with not much else supporting it. Once Warner, Smith, Starc and Hazlewood have done their thing using their God-given abilities, the team seems to lack authority and organisation.  

No ex-player who works for a TV network will blame scheduling, the lure of T20 lucre, drop-in pitches, and the virtual promotional abandonment of Test cricket by the powers that be. All forms of the game are great, but Test cricket won’t survive in the current environment, and the way it will expire is via the progressive death of Test-cricket specific skills, techniques and preparation. South Africa’s first-class scene is still healthy, but like Australia’s, it will be eroded. Then Test matches will need to be reduced to four days not for the sake of catering to contemporary tastes, but because the skills – entertaining though they be - techniques and on-the-run preparation of modern players will be unsuited to game’s long forms. A fifth day will simply be bad economics.