Australia's captain and vice captain elect have been part of another top order failure as the Ashes humiliation continued - this time against an undermanned second division county team.
Rained off first day, bowlers belted to all parts as the home team made 396 on the second. Things went from bad to worse when it came time for the visitors to bat.
David Warner was out in the fifth over for 6 and Steve Smith for a duck with bowler Maurice Chambers inducing nicks from both. Smith was named the next Australian captain on Friday but comes to the job with scores 7, 8, 6, 5 and 0 since his 215 at Lord's. His appointment was a given, Warner's nomination as his deputy somewhat less so and considerably more controversial. 
It is, however, a wiser coupling than the one formed when the board approved Michael Clarke and Shane Watson to lead.
In 2011, after an Ashes loss and a World Cup failure Ricky Ponting conceded it was time to step down and let a new man prepare for the landmark series ahead.
Clarke, as vice captain, was the obvious choice for the job. There were, however, some quibbles. Adam Gilchrist had pointed out some time before that a vice captain is not necessarily a captain in waiting - he was intimately -familiar with the concept.
The wicketkeeper had been a faithful deputy to Ponting since Shane Warne had been stripped of the job. He had no aspirations to be captain, a trait that made him the perfect wingman. When asked to stand in for the injured skipper in India in 2004, Gilchrist pulled off a remarkable series victory, but could not wait to hand back the keys to head office. The stress had exhausted him.
Daniel Brettig's recent book Whitewash to Whitewash teases out details of a last-minute hesitation by the Cricket Australia board over the appointment of Clarke. Matthew Hayden was then a member of the board and was known in cricket circles to have expressed concerns. The book reveals that a meeting to rubberstamp the takeover became more problematic as the former teammate listed what he saw as Clarke's failings, including his uneasy relationship with Ponting. The captain and vice captain were cut from different cloth and Ponting had held reservations about his readiness for the job, as he revealed in his autobiography.
"I'd been a little disappointed with some of the things he'd done - or, hadn't done - as vice captain, but I was now comfortable with the idea of him taking over," Ponting wrote. "It wasn't that he was disruptive or treacherous, and publicly he said all the right things, but he had never been one to get too involved in planning sessions or debriefs at the end of a day's play, or to volunteer to take on any of the captain's workload.
"Tim Nielsen and I had encouraged him to take on more of a leadership role within the group, but when Pup was down on form or if he had a problem away from cricket, he'd go into his shell.
"I knew he was an excellent thinker on the game, but for a long time I was concerned that he wouldn't be able to handle the huge variety of 'little things' that go with being Australian captain. I wished him all the best and he thanked me for everything I'd done for him. He also said he hoped I was going to keep playing.
"As things would turn out, Pup became a new man with the fulltime 'c' next to his name. The leadership, in many ways, would be the making of him." Clarke got the job but the appointment of a deputy, according to Brettig, was an afterthought. The board went for Watson and the seeds of a disaster were sewn. The pair always had an uneasy relationship, but it held firm through early days only to fall apart in India.
Watson publicly stood down after the tour, but in truth had been pressured out of the role by Cricket Australia as a way of brokering a peace. Brad Haddin was appointed and a truce established. It was, until these Ashes, the low point of the Clarke era.
Warner has erred on and off the field and been punished regularly. He has, however, made an effort to change.It is, from the outset, a better appointment than the Clarke-Watson one, but only time will tell if it remains so. Australian cricket, however, cannot afford a repeat of what happened last time.