Cricket Australia considers allowing England players to participate in Sheffield Shield to improve their competitiveness in Australia

“India have always been such a terrific team,” Smith said. “They’ve had good seam bowlers. We saw last year [Jasprit] Bumrah was on a different level, complemented by some other seam bowlers that just hit really good areas on the wickets that we’re playing on right now, that’s what you need.

“In terms of batters the Indian team have just got batters coming from everywhere. There’s probably a whole list of guys who weren’t here last year that could’ve played a role and done just as well as some of the players who were playing. You see that in their white ball formats a well. You can almost play an Indian B or C team, and they’d compete against anyone in the world.”

What, then, of England? Smith pointed readily to the fact that Australian players generally play a lot more games in the UK, whether at club, county or international level, than the reverse.

“In terms of being more competitive when we’re over in England, good question,” he said. “A lot of our players have had the opportunity to play some county cricket, play on some of their wickets, get used to them.

“I think over the last couple of years we’ve had players that have played other series in England before, so we’ve been exposed to those conditions and it’s entirely different. That might have something to do with it.”

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One fundamental difference between England and Australia is that the existence of 18 county clubs means there will alway be opportunities for overseas players, the tight and unrelenting contests fought out in the six-team Sheffield Shield are more or less barred to foreigners. England captain Ben Stokes is no fan of opening county cricket to overseas players.

“It is odd when you see touring teams or players get given opportunities to play county cricket before a big series,” Stokes said. “I’ve never really understood it. You never see it anywhere else in the world.

“I don’t think Australia would sign a visa for one of our lads coming over and playing Sheffield Shield games before an Ashes.”

In Adelaide, CA’s chief executive Todd Greenberg opened the possibility of room being found for some England players to take part in the Shield in future seasons, the better to understand Australian conditions. But that stratagem will face considerable opposition from the six states, and it is hard to see Australia’s selection chair George Bailey looking too kindly upon it either.

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“History says it’s been done before. I think we have to have an open mind to it,” Greenberg had said. “As the global world changes for cricket, this concept that we lock down our own paths and our own systems without some sort of broader knowledge of what’s happening around you [is wrong]. So I’d have an open mind to that.

“I was with [ECB chief executive] Richard Gould for those first two Tests, we started talking about the next Ashes series. There’s a spirit of dialogue that we would work together on that, and vice versa, that we can help him out.”

All this is to say it’s difficult to know where the next competitive Ashes series down under is going to come from. Zak Crawley, the 27-year-old England opener who has been the tourists’ leading scorer on tour, said that his progress in Australia had been incremental, but the win in Melbourne would help.

“You only get those feelings in the moment,” he said. “It’s hard to sit here and say what I’ve learned, but having played a few Tests here, I definitely get more of those moments where I think ‘God I’ve made that mistake before, I’ll try not to do it again’.

“It’s always nice to get a win and prove to yourselves that you can do it. We can definitely take that forward.”

Crawley’s signs of promise will need to become more substantial next time around. Otherwise it will be a clear five decades since Willis, Botham and company took an Australian Ashes series all the way to its final day.

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