Michael Neser is the perfect antidote to whatever it is that England call their current approach and attitude to Test cricket. This is not to say one is better than the other. Nor that one is right and the other completely wrong. But the fact remains that it's Neser's way that is working even as England continue to flounder and perish in their own narrative. It's Australia who are winning even as England stare at a gaping 0-2 deficit after what's just been five days of Test cricket in this series.

Neser's cricket is all about hard graft and calculated thrift after all. It's about valuing every opportunity. It's about making every moment count. It's about risk mitigation. It's about amplifying your strengths. It's about finding ways around your limitations. It's about bloody hard yakka. It's about playing every day of Test cricket like your life depends on it.

Especially for the 35-year-old from Queensland for whom every day of Test cricket has had had the potential of being his last. Not to forget the days and months he's spent toiling away at Sheffield Shield level to even get close to this level.

Neser's three Tests, all with the pink ball, have come across four years. In that time, he's never stopped steaming in at full tilt and bowling like there's nothing else that matters more. Whether it's been for Queensland, or Glamorgan in the County Championships, or even in every nets session that he's been a part of.

In a way, that's what makes him so hard to get a read on in terms of picking up hints around whether he's going to play the next Test or not. Because he always brings the same amount of full-throttle energy to every training session, with ball and even with bat.

This is not say that the English players in the current Test team haven't worked their backsides off to get to this level. It's just that too many of them seem to take it for granted, especially with bat in hand. And it no longer comes across as some skewed perception of this team.

It was only apt that the two batters that Neser caught off his own bowling, Ollie Pope and Zak Crawley, exemplify and embody the very spirit of what annoys so many about this English Test team and how they've gone so far in this series. Whether it's in terms of how they prepared for it or more so with their inability or stubbornness to change their ways. Or even alter it slightly based on the conditions or the match situation.

When Neser started his second spell, there was a bit of pressure on him. He hadn't started well with the new pink ball under lights. With Mitchell Starc slightly sore after his batting exploits in the searing heat, Scott Boland on and off the field, and Nathan Lyon on the bench, the moment had arrived for Neser to make his Test recall and his career count. And so he did, by breaking the back of England's top-order.

This is not to scapegoat the two, but Pope and Crawley have been persisted with the most through some highly lean periods. And have over time become the two prime examples of batters who are allowed to bat to the beat of their own drum more than anyone else in this team. Mostly because it rarely seems to work, even if the strong belief within their team is that when they fire, they'll win England matches, which they have intermittently, even if the frequency of them doing so has dropped significantly.

Their dismissals off Neser's bowling was just another reminder of the extent these two have the license to unapologetically continue to stick to their own methods and plans. The fact that England don't even have a reserve opener of note on tour is to highlight the trust they have in Crawley.

And with Pope it becomes even more evident in the way he's allowed to continue to bat the way he wants to without any intervention during his nets sessions. Even if at times, like here on each training day before the Gabba Test, he's looked as out of sorts as he did in the middle on Saturday night, before mercifully Neser brought his innings to an end. There were more disappointing dismissals a bit later, including that of Joe Root and Harry Brook, but the Neser one-two really summed up the overall anaemic collapse late on Night 3.

And it was only poetic that it was the battle-hardened workhorse of this Australia's Test team that would teach the cheery cavaliers a lesson in humility on a night which might have lost England the Ashes.