As stunned spectators filtered away from the MCG on one of the maddest Boxing Day’s cricket anyone could remember, criticism of another England batting collapse rubbed shoulders with criticism of the pitch.

It helped, of course, that Australia had already collapsed to 152 before England responded with 110, making this the craziest day in the Ashes for, well, at least five weeks.

Back on November 21 at Perth, there had been 19 wickets, with England leading by 49 at stumps. Here, there were 20, with Australia leading by 46. But while the Perth pitch was no worse than fast and bouncy, Melbourne’s offering was green and tricky, like Derby or Chelmsford in mid-April. No wonder everyone seemed so confused.

The biggest day in Australia’s sporting calendar ended with a crowd that had long since thinned out from a ground-record 94,199 cheering nightwatchman Scott Boland’s last-ball edge for four. It was his second innings in less than three hours, after his first lasted one delivery. If you blinked, the chances were you missed it.

Cricket Australia can ill afford another shortened Test after the game at Perth was over in two days, costing the board millions of dollars, and prompting CA chief executive Todd Greenberg to admit: ‘It hurt.’

Quite why MCG curator Matt Page served up a seaming mamba was a mystery made even less fathomable by his pre-match insistence that he was hoping for a repeat of the surface which produced a five-day classic against India a year ago. ‘Epic,’ he said. Yet the general consensus after Friday’s play here was: ‘Epic failure.’

Michael Vaughan called the surface ‘a shocker for a Test match on the first day’, and added: ‘It has just done far too much.’ Commentating on Australian radio, Stuart Broad agreed: ‘Test match bowlers don’t need this amount of movement to look threatening.’

Alastair Cook, meanwhile, said: ‘The bowlers didn’t have to work that hard for wickets. You put it in the right area, it’s going to nip either way. It’s a bit of an unfair contest.’

And in case that all sounds like English sour grapes after another day which ended with Australia in the ascendancy, Glenn McGrath – who worked hard for the 42 wickets he took during 11 Melbourne Tests – was not exactly complimentary either. ‘This pitch has far too much grass on it,’ he said. ‘I was saying 7mm, but it is 10mm. That pitch has too much life in it for Test cricket.’

The conditions brought into sharper focus the muddle in which England’s batting unit finds itself as this tour approaches its conclusion. Because for all the optimism that surrounded Josh Tongue’s career-best five for 45, a high-class haul that included the prize wicket of Steve Smith, bowled driving through the gate, there was English apprehension about what it would all mean when Australia’s relentless seam attack took its turn.

A sea change has washed over England ever since Ben Stokes delivered his ‘no country for weak men’ soliloquy after the second Test at Brisbane – a howl of frustration that may have had the opposite effect from the one he desired.

Faced with one of the world’s flattest pitches in Adelaide, England went into their shells at precisely the moment their oft-stated desire to put pressure on their opponents might have served them well.

Pat Cummins, who resumed the captaincy for that game before opting to sit out the rest of the series to nurse his sore back, reflected on their first-innings performance during that third Test like this: ‘It was 40-odd degrees, it was hot, it was a very flat wicket and they shut up shop for half the day, which I was pretty happy with.’

It was a well-observed dig. By the time England discovered a happier balance between risk and reward in the second innings, scoring 352 as they chased 435, the Ashes had already been lost.

Now, on the first day at Melbourne, with jobs on the line and careers in the balance, too many opted again for the safety-first approach of the defensive prod, when it was clear that counter-attack was the only way of making any kind of impact in the conditions.

Only Harry Brook seemed to grasp this, employing his rare hand-eye coordination to make 41 off 34 balls, the day’s highest score and certainly its bravest batting. Even he eventually paid the price for timidity, taking two singles off the six balls before he pushed forward to Boland and trapped so palpably in front that he didn’t even discuss the possibility of a review with Stokes.

There was the usual pearl-clutching from those who felt his approach reckless, but what did they prefer? Zak Crawley edging Mitchell Starc tamely to second slip for five, or Joe Root prodding Michael Neser to Alex Carey for a 15-ball duck?

We have entered a strange and probably fatal discourse for the Bazball era, with meek thin edges for low scores regarded as preferable to batsmen attempting to halt the one-way traffic by going on the attack.

Stokes produced one off-driven four off Neser, but otherwise the only other England player to find the boundary was the only one who dared to attack – Gus Atkinson, whose 28 from No 9 was the day’s fourth-highest score.

The losing team are always forced to address their shortcomings in a way the victors are not, but England should be careful what they wish for. Playing largely conventional cricket has led to one series victory in Australia since 1986-87.

After the first day at the MCG, their biggest problem seemed to be that they no longer seem to know what style of cricket they were playing at all.