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PL attends the pressers in Perth

Asked about Mark Wood’s limited preparation, Ben Stokes says “he’s flying”, reflects momentarily on what he’s been on the receiving end of in the nets and chuckles, “he’s bowling … rapid”.

First balls, as we all know by now, have set the tone in a few of the recent Ashes series. First press conferences can also give you something of a clue, so it was a good 50-plus that packed out the room in the bowels of the Perth Stadium to hear Steve Smith and Stokes give their final impressions before the morning’s clash.

Gideon spoke recently about Michael Clarke’s strangely flat intonation ahead of the 2015 Ashes as a precursor to the series that followed.

When Tim Paine did his first Ashes captain’s call ahead of the 2019 series, he was taken aback by the feverish tone:

“I was pretty relaxed, but the moment I opened the door it was clear this was different to anything I’d done before,” he wrote in his autobiography. “For starters, it was the size of it. There were so many people crammed into a section of an odd-shaped space which is also the media dining room. There was a different mood, a different feel, it was tense, as if the journos were nervous about the big series and you could almost see a split in the media in the way they’d arranged themselves with the Australians on one side and hte English on the other.”

Paine navigated some pointed questioning of his place in the side, given Alex Carey was, according to the questioner, clearly a superior batter. The English press, however, leapt on Paine’s dismissal of the suggestion that the Edgbaston crowd was the most hostile on earth. Ignorant of the fact that it almost certainly is, the Australian said he could name 15 worse ones. On reflection, he realised he’d made a mistake, but at least one outlet was able to frame its story around the defensive responses from the visiting skipper.

All of England – fans, the press, the pundits, vicars, small dogs and possibly even a few dogging practitioners – seemed to be gunning for Australia in 2019. It was their first chance to express their moral outrage over the sandpaper affair, and they were keen to take it.

By contrast, Stokes and Smith’s sessions on Thursday seemed to the casual Australian observer, almost relaxed affairs.

England sides have made a habit of arriving with a defensive mentality. They dig a bunker on landing and become further entrenched with every passing day.

You can’t blame them. Flying into an Ashes series from the other half of the world must feel like flying into the eye of a hurricane.