England are now butt of the joke

happened in the Avenue bar in Perth on October 29. But Bancroft later revealed that he thought the England player “weird” but “not malicious”.

“He connected with my head,” said the opener, smiling as captain Smith collapsed in fits of laughter beside him. “With a force that would make me think, ‘Wow, that’s a bit weird. I had been expecting a handshake or something’.

“But although it wasn’t the greeting I was expecting, there was certainly no malice in his action and we continued on having a very good conversation for the rest of the evening.”

England are annoyed to have been suckered into this maelstrom four weeks after the event and there is a feeling within the camp that the Australians, on learning of the incident (presumably when Bancroft was called up), have chosen to wait to use it to their advantage on their first day of dominance on day four at the Gabba.

Smith said: “I think it was basically about trying to get Jonny off his game, ANDREW STRAUSS was at his most impassioned yesterday when he said the last thing he wanted to do was strip away the joy of touring.

It would be a sad day, the former captain and now England cricket boss said, when you are not experiencing what a great country like Australia has to offer.

Yet Jonny Bairstow’s butt on Cameron Bancroft, which now seems likely not to have been much of an incident at all, has not helped him ply that line.

The big problem for Strauss, despite the fact that they have “done a lot of work on this over the last 10 months”, is that his players do not seem to be listening.

Just two months after Ben Stokes, he has been forced to speak out in defence of another player.

Strauss said: “We are no more than two months away from the incident with Ben that robbed England of their best player and we are here again.”

True, this is by no means comparable in terms of seriousness, but the fact that the first night England touched down in Australia several players rushed out on the booze is worrying.

Nobody wants to see a team of church mice. But the players have to realise that the landscape has changed since the days even of Strauss – nights out are always in danger of being documented by ubiquitous mobile phones.

How England fare for the rest of the trip is dependent on how they behave on the field rather than off it. But there is little likelihood that the team will be out and about in Adelaide. They have effectively been grounded.