The England and Wales Cricket Board is ready to offer Australia their pick of warmup facilities before the next Ashes series in 2027, in an attempt to secure similar treatment when England return in 2029-30 and avoid being forced into the kind of buildup that preceded this series and has become the focus of intense criticism.

England’s preparations are under the microscope given their dismal start to this series, with the first Test lost inside two days and the second match lost in four, with Australia’s winning margin being eight wickets on each occasion.

“If I was an England supporter and had paid the money to come here, I’d be asking the ECB for a refund,” Ian Botham said on Sunday. “Because this team, for me, is not prepared.”

Though much of the travelling squad was in Perth, venue of the first Ashes Test, by 2 November, 19 days before the commencement of hostilities, and the remainder had arrived by 9 November, their only cricket that could even be loosely defined as competitive before the series got under way was a two-day game against the Lions, a collection of their own reserves and promising youngsters.

That match was played at Lilac Hill, a public park on the outskirts of the city where the low, slow pitch was a complete contrast to the pace and bounce they were forced to deal with against Australia a few days later.

“Everyone is pretty aware conditions are very different … Perth Stadium isn’t going to be like that,” Ollie Pope admitted at the end of that match, in which England’s No 3 scored 100 and 90 in his two innings; he has 105 runs in four innings during the Ashes campaign so far.

Now, however, the ECB and Cricket Australia are discussing the possibility of entering into a memorandum of understanding to cover the teams’ preparations for the next two Ashes series, guaranteeing each other high‑class facilities, on similar surfaces and in similar weather to those they will face in Tests, and matches against high‑quality opposition if desired.

When India visited Australia a year ago they were given sole access to the Waca, Western Australia’s traditional home, on the opposite bank of the Swan River from Perth Stadium and prepared by the same ground staff. Cricket Australia might have been put off from repeating such generosity when India proceeded to win the opening game of the Border‑Gavaskar Trophy by 295 runs, though Australia then won three of the remaining four matches in the series.

While England have consistently defended their series preparations in public – “Preparation is not the question for me at all,” the assistant coach Marcus Trescothick said on Saturday. “We’re very happy with the preparation that we’ve used and what we’ve had” – their preference would have been to also use the Waca.

But a Sheffield Shield game between Western Australia and Queensland was scheduled for precisely the period when they were playing their warmup, which meant the only Ashes combatants who benefited from honing their skills there before the start of the series were the Australians Marnus Labuschagne, Cameron Green, Michael Neser and Josh Inglis (though only the first two played in the series opener).

Instead they were initially offered the chance to play a warmup game on a club ground 1500 miles away in Adelaide. When they requested to be moved to Perth they were told that they would only have access to a ground of similar quality.

They were then offered a two-day pink-ball warmup for this week’s day-night Test in Brisbane, but 600 miles away in Canberra, where even the former Australia seamer Peter Siddle said the conditions would be “totally different” and that “there’s not going to be a lot they can get out of it”. They sent the Lions, augmented by three members of the Ashes squad who had not played the opening game.

Australia warmed up for the 2023 Ashes by playing the World Test Championship final against India at the Oval, and for that by training at the County Ground in Beckenham, south London, where the facilities were impressive enough for them to return before the WTC final this year.

“It feels like this is becoming the norm for Test tours,” George Bailey, their chief selector, said in 2023. “It feels like there’s more tours that you don’t have a tour match than when you do.”