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McCullum, the mastermind of Bazball, said England would not cool their jets for a more conservative game plan.
“We’ve got some work to do, no doubt, but one thing we won’t be changing is our blueprint,” McCullum told the BBC.
“We’ll stay true to that and we’ll stay tight as a team and as we have done in the past when we’ve lost games, we’ll keep moving forward and make sure that confidence levels when we hit the next game are as high as possible.
Zak Crawley had an absolute nightmare in Perth – ducks in each innings.Credit: AP
“The way Travis [Head] played was outstanding and one of the best innings under pressure I have seen. He put us under pressure and fair play. That knock was special, and it was a brave call to put him up the order. He was superb. We will try and insulate against reacting too much.”
Vaughan said England would not have success without more flexibility in their approach.
“To bat only 67 overs in a Test match, it’s not good enough,” Vaughan told Kayo Sports. “I genuinely feel this England team with the depth in the squad, they’ve got enough tools here to be really competitive. But you can’t be competitive without brains. They’ve tried to play one way, and they’ve come unstuck.
“If they’re not sitting down as a batting unit and going through all the mistakes they’ve made this week they’re going to get absolutely hammered. They have to learn from the mistakes they’ve made this week.”
A stony-faced Stokes had yet to come to terms with how his team had been blown off the park by Head when he spoke on Saturday night.
“We have to let that whole two hours sink in and reflect on it properly, without the emotion attached to what’s just gone on,” Stokes said.
“There’s a lot of disappointment when you walk off having been on the losing side. That’s up to myself, Baz [McCullum] and some of the other senior guys who have a lot of experience in big series like these.
“[We need to] let emotions like this sink in, it has got to hurt. [But] you have to get rid of it as quickly as possibly while learning from it. When we get to Brisbane we need to be back to that mindset we had before this game.
“We are still very confident in our abilities in achieving a goal. We have to not take any baggage from this result into Brisbane because we need to win that one.”
Stokes defended England’s approach with the bat, saying those who prospered in the conditions were the players who attacked the bowling rather than being dictated by it.
“You can label it how you want when you’ve got the outcome,” Stokes said.
“The batsmen who found success were ones who didn’t let go any scoring opportunities that came their way. You still have to find ways of scoring runs on flat wickets, ways of scoring runs on wickets that offer lots for the bowlers.
“The way 19 wickets fell on day one, we were more proactive with our approach, which is how we got a 50-run lead. It would have been nice to have a bigger lead going into the final innings, but we were very confident we could win the game but that wasn’t the case.”
The effect of England’s reckless batting was compounded by the lack of rest it afforded their speed demons, who, weary from having to bowl on consecutive days, lost their pace and became fodder for Head.
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England’s bowlers averaged 141km/h on the first day, but Jofra Archer was down to the high 130s, backing up after little red-ball cricket since he stormed into the Test arena in 2019.
“I think that can be a natural thing to happen,” Stokes said of England’s drop in pace. “The day-one expenditure of an Ashes series, I think it takes a lot out of you – more than what people could probably understand. We threw quite a lot of energy and effort into that bowling performance yesterday.
“Bat for longer is a pretty easy thing to say, a lot harder to do. Every bowler would love a bit more rest, but yeah.”
