Within the first session of play on the first day of the fourth Ashes Test Match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, Australia were bundled out for an astounding total of 60 runs. Having elected to field first, England’s bowling was consistently excellent, and they were aided by conditions that had just enough nip. The hometown boy Stuart Broad scalped eight Aussie victims, and he was particularly impressive in using the crease to vary his angles to outstanding effect. But this was by no means a performance of any thrilling repute from England. For the most part, Australia were simply undone, as they had been in the third test at Edgbaston, by a shambolic batting performance that was characterised by utter non-application of mind or technique.

Test match cricket, like most other sport, often produces one-sided contests. But part of its premium, in theory at any rate, is the excellence in sporting standards that it is meant to yield. Contrary to popular perception, the present Australian batting line-up is not devoid of talent. Yet it was telling that none of its batsmen possessed the wherewithal to counter the opposition under what were typical English conditions. As is only to be expected, Australia failed to recover from their batting performance on the first morning, and have now abjectly conceded the Ashes to an English side that is, at its best, promising and, at its worst, eminently beatable.

One of the most significant statistics from the first session’s play was that only eight of the 111 deliveries that it took to bowl out Australia were actually going on to hit the stumps. This, in itself, is a damning indictment of the Australian batsmen’s flawed technique. In English conditions, as is almost trite to observe, it’s imperative that batsmen, especially against the new ball, leave deliveries both on line and length. But, until their number eight batsman Mitchell Johnson came in to bat, none of the Australians showed even as much as an inclination towards allowing the ball to float through to the wicketkeeper. It’s one thing to make mistakes based on misjudgement. But it’s an altogether different thing to make no effort towards judging deliveries and choosing which ones to play. The latter transgression is simply inexcusable at Test match level.

Worryingly though, this Australian performance, while representing a nadir, isn’t an outlier. Increasingly, batting line-ups around the world, including England’s, have displayed inherent fragility, and have often gone down like nine pins to unexceptional bowling attacks. “You just don’t see the old-fashioned blunting of the new ball, or players scrapping through a tough spell,” wrote the former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting in a column last week. “It seems as though when you lose one wicket you lose four or five in a rush, and the game goes with them.” Ponting, among others, have pointed towards the advent, and establishment, of Twenty-20 cricket as a primary cause for this decline in batting techniques.

There’s unquestionably an element of truth to this theory. Although there are some notable exceptions, even those who spent their formative years honing their skills in long-form cricket, increasingly find the task of batting for extended periods, of giving the new ball its due, an onerous task. As the former England captain Graham Gooch noted in 2013, “It’s the whole package of not only having the technical skills but having the attitude, the mental toughness, the discipline, the concentration. Anyone can concentrate for 15-20 minutes, but to score Test hundreds you have to concentrate for a long period of time.”

To a large extent, the decline in the technical and mental aptitude of batsmen is a consequence of having to adapt one’s game to the demands of limited overs cricket. Once a cricketer makes a fundamental switch in his attitude towards the art of batsmanship — towards a culture that demands that every ball be met with a heavy bat — it’s difficult to attune oneself to the rigours of Test matches.

No doubt, there are some batsmen, such as England’s Alastair Cook and India’s Cheteshwar Pujara, who have retained an aptitude for batting within largely traditional confines. Their respective failures in limited overs games, though, make their methods unappealing in an era where much of a cricketer’s financial wellbeing depends on performances in T-20 leagues. Yet, as Murali Vijay — who has enjoyed the riches of the Indian Premier League — has shown, it’s still very much possible for a player to bat in Test matches in a manner that is conventionally chiselled.

Vijay, who not too long ago was known mostly for his exploits in the IPL, has rapidly established himself as India’s most dependable Test batsman. He has achieved this through hard work and reliance on ‘unfashionable’ methods — of recognising where his off-stump is, and showcasing oodles of patience and mental strength. Yet, in his case too, there is a catch.

Vijay, for all his T-20 adventures, first made his name as an opener for Tamil Nadu who could bat for hours on end. And his more recent rejuvenation as a long-form cricketer has also come at the expense of a declining form in limited overs cricket. So, perhaps, it is difficult for most batsmen to have to make constant transitions between various formats, and as long as T-20 continues to rise in importance, the quality of Test match batting, more than anything else, is likely to suffer.

Suhrith Parthasarathy is a Chennai-based lawyer,writer; @suhrith

Related Topics