New coach, new captain, same old England.

Familiar woes with the bat have soured the first day of Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes’ touted ‘red-ball reset’, with the Poms collapsing to 6-117 at stumps to undo a dominant performance with the ball against New Zealand.

Making things even more galling was that openers Zak Crawley and Alex Lees had surged to a 59-run stand before the first wicket fell, with Crawley’s 45 more than Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow and Stokes managed combined.

After Crawley feathered an edge through to Tom Blundell off Kyle Jamieson, the Black Caps would inflict yet another collapse on England, having repeatedly lost vast swathes of wickets in the last four years, most obviously during last summer’s 4-0 Ashes defeat.

They would lose 5-8 at the height of the collapse to turn a strong position at 2-92 into a wretched one at 7-100, before keeper Ben Foakes and Stuart Broad able to fight through to stumps.

The disappointment was evident in the England media, with former captains Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain admitting there is still plenty of work to be done before the team can once again be a successful Test nation.

“A lengthy tail was suddenly exposed by the collective failure of the middle order, the strongest element of England’s batting line-up,” Atherton wrote in The Times.

“The memories of the winter came flooding back. This was a strange day to evaluate: seventeen wickets fell all told, to a combination of excellent swing and seam bowling, sharp catching, some loose batting from both sides, and conditions that encouraged the bowlers just enough all day long.”

Writing in the Daily Mail, Hussain expressed frustration with the ‘familiar fragility’ of England’s batting line-up.

England’s Ben Stokes walks off after being dismissed. (Photo by Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)

“No matter how much good work Stokes did in the first half of the day, he was reminded in the second half that England’s Test batting is still a big issue,” he wrote.

“There’s plenty of work still to be done – technically, mentally and positionally. 

“For instance, having Ollie Pope batting at No 3 for the first time was never going to be straightforward. But this is a structural, long-term problem, and it’s not going to be solved overnight. Until that dreadful final session, there were reasons to be cheerful. 

“You can change the regime, it seems, but not England’s fragility with the bat.”

While the former pros were keen to espouse the virtues of England’s performance despite the collapse, more damning were the press pack.

Writing in The Telegraph, cricket doyenne Scyld Berry was scathing of Root, saying even though the 31-year old his no longer captain, he needs to bat with greater responsibility in a new-look batting line-up.

“For England’s senior statesman it was far too frolicsome an innings,” Berry wrote.

“If England are going to refresh their Test batting, they need Root to set the young bucks the right example: not looking to score from ball one, but wearing the bowlers down, for hour after tedious hour if needs be, then cashing in when the ball is old and the bowling tired. No short cuts. No cuts at all until well set.”

Crawley, too, was brought back down to earth by Berry, despite his innings-high score, with the 24-year old’s looseness outside off stump bringing about his downfall just when he seemed on the verge of a match-shaping score.

“Zak Crawley is going to top-score in England’s latest horror show, but so what? It was he who brought the house tumbling down by going for one of his big drives,” Berry argued.

“He had been controlled hitherto in his strokeplay but got giddy once again, throwing his hands at a ball that was not there. And as England’s opponents must now say, one wicket brings ten.

“It has not yet turned out to be a new era, but the same old error: a gung-ho fearlessness that is actually fecklessness. At start of play, after Bairstow’s catch, we were thinking “Here we go!” By the close we were saying something almost similar, but with a world of difference: “Here we go again.””

Telegraph chief sports writer Oliver Brown was even more critical, describing England’s batting as ‘brainless’ and the line-up as being ‘traumatised’ by a history of collapses.

“A mood of sun-dappled joy at Lord’s morphed into one of mute, weary fatalism,” he wrote of the evening’s play.

“Yes, this is England, the team that goes through more false dawns than the most chronic insomniacs. You can talk of red-ball resets all you like, but this side’s brainlessness with the bat runs too deep to be solved by the flick of a switch.”

McCullum’s coaching has also come under scrutiny; having promised to turn England’s batting from tentative to imposing, in the manner of his New Zealand sides of old, the downfall of the aggressive game plan late was startling.

“For long stretches of the first two sessions, England bore the hallmarks of his own inimitable style: aggressive, enterprising, fearless. The advice of managing director Rob Key to “buckle up for the ride” seemed well-put,” Brown wrote.

“By the close, though, this Stokes-driven ride was inducing less a sense of exhilaration than a creeping, familiar nausea.”