Those discussions are all a distraction from what happens after the first wicket falls. Australia's real problems lie at three and four, where the Brothers Caffeine, with their once extravagant leaves and unconventional movements at the wicket now exposed as their confidence has plummeted and their missing off stumps can no longer be found.
Despite their spectacularly incongruous nomenclature - the syllable and vowel expansive Marnus Labuschagne and the dialectally sparse Steve Smith - and their outstanding records up until and including the West Indies series nearly two years ago, they are now the weakest link in the Australian batting.
