Welcome back then, England. It’s been a while. Just not, as it happens, quite long enough.

On a sullen, grey day at Lord’s England were both oddly meek and jarringly aggressive en route to a comprehensive 64-run defeat by Australia that leaves their World Cup campaign, at best, intriguingly poised.

This could still end in glory. The tournament is still there to be won. Even if England have looked anything but favourites while failing twice to reach 230 as the pressure has begun to ratchet up. For all the fear of dead rubbers, we are instead being treated to the equally gripping spectacle of an uncrowned champion team losing their nerve, cracking and flaking a little as the endgame approaches.

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This was a game that died in stages for England. The decisive cut came in a moment of brilliance from a man who knows quite a lot about peaking at the right time.

At 5.20pm Mitchell Starc came back to bowl his sixth over from the Nursery end. In the morning Australia had batted doggedly to post 285 for seven after losing the toss. In reply England were already paddling: behind the run rate, five wickets down, but still just about alive.

Mainly they had Ben Stokes, who had batted beautifully to reach 88 at the start of that over, and with some controlled rage, too, in an innings that had threatened to wilt.

Starc came in off that long bounding run and produced five full-pitched rockets that jarred the toe of the bat. The sixth killed the game. It was a thing of beauty, too, a full pitcher that angled in to Stokes, opening him up to clip it to leg, then veered away in the last five yards of its trajectory, sliding past the outside edge to detonate his stumps. Stokes dropped his bat, kicked it, stared at the grass as around him the yellow shirts whooped and leapt and hugged.

Oh, England. For the last two years this blue machine has swaggered through its ODI cricket, playing only in the high gears, facing only forward, never taking a step that wasn’t forward: and aggressively forward, too, all the while talking about how step-like its steps are, how aggressive its aggression.

Change the parts, change the brand, change the chat. Talk, by all means, with unsmiling defiance in press conferences about playing one way and not feeling pressure and fearing no one. But this is still England, a country of great but circumscribed resources.

And more to the point, this is England at a 50-over World Cup that the ECB has built towards for four years, pinning on this team the idea of somehow resuscitating the sport itself, bursting out of those self-drawn boundaries. No pressure then.

It was Starc here who exposed the weak spots. James Vince emerged to lead the chase with an air of precooked doom about him. There is presumably such a thing as a good second-ball duck. This was not one of them. Vince blocked the first ball of the innings. The second from Jason Behrendorff was fuller, swinging in just a little. At which point the day began to fall apart. Vince went to drive grandly, expansively, loosely through wide midwicket. Instead he found fresh air.

Next Starc ripped out England’s red- and white-ball captains with two contrasting pieces of brilliance First was Joe Root, who played forward to a ball on middle and off that stayed on middle and off, stayed a bit longer, then veered at the last into his pad. It was followed by something more brutal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mitchell Starc inswingers were key to dismantling England’s batting order as he helped himself to four for 43. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

Eoin Morgan had already skipped out to Behrendorff and battered him through mid-off, a wild shot reminiscent of man at a boozy afternoon picnic swatting flies with a tennis racket. He’d faced three balls from Starc and hopped at each of them.

The fourth was directed at the bridge of his nose. He flailed, windmilling round after the ball and Pat Cummins took the catch. It was simply too much for Morgan, whose last first-class match saw him bat No 6 here against Lancashire. Few activities can prepare you for Starc at his thrilling best. It seems fairly certain this isn’t one of them.

From there the innings unravelled. Jonny Bairstow played well before hitting the ball up in the air. Chris Woakes played well before hitting the ball up in the air. Adil Rashid played well before hitting the ball up in the air. Jofra Archer cut to the chase and simply hit the ball up in the air.

Does this England team deserve to win a World Cup? If there is a shared quality that defines this era, the age of the self‑governing blue Lycra juggernaut, it is a sense of detachment. England batted here and at Leeds like a team detached from the reality of the day and the game, out there floating in their tin can, high above the world. This is our brand. We are not what went before. We go one way, and that way (have we mentioned?) is forward.

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England will be called brainless, feckless, flat-track and all the rest. But the key note of the last two defeats has been detachment, an inability to read the day, the game, the forces acting on them.

It could yet end in glory. That needle could simply hit the groove again. But it will take something more than we have so far seen; a test of more than just those brittle methods, but of character too, in some unplanned adversity.