The England captaincy has been in a state of flux ever since Michael Vaughan’s knee buckled again early on the tour to Pakistan, only two months after the all too heady triumph against Australia last year.

Andrew Flintoff’s campaign has been a lamentable failure — and he will probably pay for it — but with a match still to go it is worth pointing out that the responsibility is very far from his alone. In particular, he could have expected much more during the third and fourth Tests from the one batsman whom Australia fear, Kevin Pietersen.

The home team have made a point, in print and in press conferences, of praising Pietersen’s skill whenever possible. Perhaps they believe that it will go to his head. It would certainly not be beyond the plans of John Buchanan, the Australia coach, to see him as a means of dividing the England dressing-room and thereby of ruling them.

Pietersen’s dismissal yesterday was a simple case of a fine ball beating an optimistic stroke from a man under pressure to score runs whenever he bats.

He would not have been facing the ball that bowled him, however, had he paid more attention to his running between the wickets and less to his own self-absorbed, even self-obsessed, world. Having taken what for once was a reasonable, albeit quickish, opening single to square leg, he overran the crease at the far end by five yards and was busy congratulating himself on getting off the mark as Michael Clarke misfielded. A long second run would have been possible if, as every Australian would have been programmed to do, he had turned immediately and looked for a second until any possibility of getting it had been eliminated.

Exceptional batsman that he is, Pietersen has increasingly looked a detached figure in this team, no matter how genuinely he believes himself to be committed to the cause.

Doing his own thing for Christmas lunch, like several others, and going to a breakfast in support of Shane Warne’s charity on Boxing Day morning is not necessarily a symptom, although it suggests that being a member of the other ICC, the International Celebrities Club, is his priority. The manner in which he batted with the tail in Perth, taking singles regularly off the first ball of an over, revealed a solipsism that has to be arrested both by himself and the management if the very best is to be made of his brilliance — and his dedicated professionalism.

Throughout the series, as had been the case throughout every Ashes contest between 1989 and 2005, Australia’s ground fielding has been more committed than England’s and their running between the wickets much sharper. For both these reasons they steal more singles and run twos where England look only for ones.

Partly this reflects Australia’s zeal and England’s relative ennui, itself something to do with winning and losing. Partly it is simply that Australia’s fielding has been on a higher plane. Their best athletes — Andrew Symonds, Clarke and Mike Hussey — all field in one-saving positions.

In the same places, England had Stephen Harmison, Monty Panesar and Alastair Cook throughout the Melbourne Test. Mid-off and mid-on tended to field too deep, so taking a single to them was a mere formality. It is little things such as this that made the difference in 2005.

Even then, England’s field placings under Vaughan were often a little too unconventional to be effective for long. Matthew Hayden, for example, has long since worked out how to get round the short mid-off still routinely set for him. Flintoff sometimes used a short and a deeper mid-off, but no second slip and no third man.

England generally bowled too short on a pitch offering movement off the seam to those who pitched the ball up. Flintoff has followed the Vaughan/Fletcher plans a little too closely and been too inclined to go into defensive mode in a vain attempt to slow the rate of Australia’s scoring. That worked in 2005; it has failed this time, but there seems to have been no plan B.