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Joe Root and James Vince are separated by two months, a few hundred miles and 5,000 Test runs. Root celebrated his 27th birthday last week in Melbourne, cutting a much more relaxed figure than the apparition that stalked the toss at the MCG. Today he raged again – as he has done all series – against those maddening internal blockages, to a fourth fifty, only to perish once more in that no-man’s land between good and inarguable.

Four years ago, Root was removed at the last from the Sydney funeral march, ostensibly to protect him from more misery; it was an omission, he says, that helped turn him into the cricketer we see today. But it’s nine matches now in Australia, and no Ashes hundred. It is inconceivable that he won’t one day; but then again, who knows? Four years is a long time in cricket. It will feel like an aeon tonight.

In the midst of it all is, well, Dawid Malan, inching in the evening sunshine past Alastair Cook to become England’s top runscorer in the series. Of the newbies, while Vince has infuriated and Mark Stoneman under-delivered for the starts he’s made – another one today, another good nut, another nothing score – it’s been the self-contained Malan, trusting to his way, who has emerged. He resumes on 55 in the morning, but England, on a flat one, with a long tail, have conspired to turn a promising position into a demoralisingly limp one. It feels unfair that their hopes of a competitive first-innings score appear to rest on him, but this is the new reality.

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