England’s response to headbutt controversy doesn’t cut it, writes Robert Craddock

IT was hard to know what part of Cameron Bancroft’s day caused England more damage, his straight bat at the crease or his straight talk afterwards, writes Robert Craddock.

Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith answer questions after the first Test.

IT was hard to know what part of Cameron Bancroft’s day caused England more damage — his straight bat at the crease or his straight talk afterwards.

Once the laughs had died down from Bancroft’s memorable press conference it was clear his performance actually defined the contrasting states of mind of the two Ashes teams.

Australia has suddenly become a relaxed, nothing-to-hide team riding high in the saddle, looking the world in the eye and laughing along with it.

HEADBUTT: “WEIRD, RANDOM” BANCROFT ON BAIRSTOW

FIRST TEST: DOMINANT AUSSIES CRUISE TO GABBA WIN

CRADDOCK: 10 THINGS WE LEARNT FROM FIRST TEST

And England, so impressive early in the Test, have melted into a muddled, unravelling force, trapped between a haunted past with the Ben Stokes affair and an conflicted future where shaky behavioural guidelines are being reshaped on the run and from one crisis to the next.

Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root should be embarrassed by their press conference performances after the Test as they attempted to downplay the impact of Bairstow’s headbutt on Bancroft.

Bairstow’s line that “hopefully we can now swipe this under the table’’, crass as its sounds, summed up England’s state of mind.

Cameron Bancroft and David Warner after winning the first Test.

Jonny Bairstow shakes hands with Cameron Bancroft.

Move on, move on, nothing to see here ...

The Root-Bairstow line that the headbutt story was much ado about nothing was never going to cut it in the Ben Stokes era.

The trouble with claiming an incident is a storm in a tea cup is that you concede that something actually did happen inside the tea cup.

And when you are talking headbutts they rarely come in tea cup sizes.

No, it was not a seismic incident. But it was a dumb, horrendously timed piece of ill-discipline and Bairstow and Root could not even admit that. Do you know of anyone who meets people for the first time with a headbutt?

Talk about how not to manage a crisis.

The very fact that Bairstow refused to answer questions was a setback to his story for there is nothing so guilty-looking as a man who doesn’t want to be quizzed on what he has just said.

In many ways they were prisoners of the past.

Root and Bairstow were at pains not to mention the word “headbutt’’ because had they done so a curious world would want to know why, however playful it sounded, there was no fine or suspension, particularly after the Stokes incident.

The man who saw the incident closest to what it was was England’s Australian coach Trevor Bayliss, who got progressively more angry and candid the longer he answered questions.

The no-nonsense Penrith boy is as unflappable as they come in press conferences but he was using words like “dumb and stupid’’.

For the measured Bayliss that’s the equivalent of a volcanic eruption.

Jonny Bairstow fronts the media after the first Ashes Test.

Then Bancroft came in and said it was a headbutt, maybe not a hammer blow, but certainly “weird”. Game over for England.

Many decades ago when Bodyline captain Douglas Jardine was in Perth his team was sent a bottle of whiskey each by a local distiller but the captain intercepted them in the foyer and said “send them back.’’

The moral was England teams rarely win in Australia without major sacrifices. Jardine’s team made them.

Can Root’s team do the same?

Originally published as England’s response to headbutt controversy doesn’t cut it, writes Robert Craddock