“They were shocking shots. I’ll admit that every day of the week. Especially the one in Perth. It was nearly a bouncer and I’ve tried to drive it. It was just bad batting. The one in Brisbane I’ve tried to hit it for six. That’s what I mean when I say I need to rein it in a bit.”

Oh yes, Harry. This is real transgression. Inject that mild good sense into my throbbing veins. Trash talk binned. Mind games deactivated. Tell me about reining it in again. Shock me with your filthy, filthy conservatism. Talk sensible to me baby.

It is a mark of how far through the looking glass England’s Test cricket boosterism has gone over the last three years that the most convincing battle cry available to this team right now is the sound of their leading middle order batter saying, hmm, I think I’m going to be a bit more careful out there.

But then, as Harry Brook pointed out in the final round of media duties before Wednesday’s third Ashes Test, this really is crunch time. Adelaide is a lovely, light, orderly kind of place. It doesn’t feel like a stage for reckoning-ups and last dances. It feels like a larger, squarer, non-freezing Scandinavia. But this is where we are now, with legacies being divvied up, eras diced, the executive gibbet clanked into place. For England this really is shit or Bazt.

And not just for this series and this administration, but to some extent for the vibes king himself, It-Boy of the current regime. What are we supposed to make of Brook at this jumping-off point in his own brilliant career? What does he mean? Is he great? Is he actually any good? Is he the very best at being bad?

England have been wretched so far in this series, stinking the place out from the western desert to the Queensland coast. But it is not inconceivable they could win in Adelaide. For this to happen the single most telling, most achievable contribution would be a day of Brook, a moment when he brings that undoubtedly luminous talent to bear.

This would also be something new, a levelling up. For all the headline numbers, it remains the case that Brook still doesn’t have any really defining big-league moments yet as an elite cricketer. Half centuries in a drawn home Ashes. A T20 World cup medal with 58 balls faced all tournament. Scored a hundred in the IPL, then fell out with the IPL, and indeed all of India.

Even his stellar Test figures are compacted into a skewed sample size by the oddities of the schedule. To date half of Brook’s Test runs and six of his 10 hundreds have come in New Zealand and Pakistan where he averages a princely 80. The other half , in England and Australia, he averages 41.

This week Joe Root described Brook as “a generational talent”, with the usual sense that this lies in what is to come, that promise spread out like a spring-woken tree. But this is his generation, right here, right now. These are the moments. Brook is almost 27 now. Who does he want to be?

For now he remains one of those sports people who pose the basic question of what elite talent actually is. An absence of limits? The basic capacity to do things others simply can’t? Or is talent also the ability to apply will and desire to a degree you actually affect the game. Some of the best Michael Atherton innings could feel like watching a man trying to wriggle his way out of a broken clotheshorse while having rocks thrown at his head. But he also saved quite a few Tests.

So far Brook’s key contribution is to embody perfectly the early gains of the age of Baz, while also folding in the sense of becoming predictable in its unpredictability, manufactured rebellion, Nu-Metal cricket.

That first-innings shocker in Brisbane, the wild drive first up to Mitchell Starc, was all the more maddening because Brook had looked so easy at the other end of his innings. His fourth ball was sent zinging off his hip to the boundary like a hockey puck skimming the ice. There was a premeditated hedgehog-roll scoop, a weird upright flick just over square leg.

All this on day one, 1-0 down, a whole winter resting on what happens in the next two hours. And suddenly England’s most talented player is batting like he’s prime Graeme Swann and England are 600 for six.

You wonder to what degree, as with Ollie Pope, Brook has been hampered rather than liberated by the cult-like obsession with aggression and attitude. Even the new, sensible pre-Adelaide Brook sounded like he was wrestling with fundamental issues of tempo.

So England have “had a clear message to stay in the moment”, while being guilty previously of “looking too far ahead” (er, not so you’d notice) . “You’ve got to try and create your own bad balls. That might be me running down or chancing my guard.” Might it? Can we just go back to the shockers again?

“I know sometimes I’ve got to rein it in a bit. Learn to absorb the pressure a bit more, and realise when the opportunity arrives to put pressure back on them.” It is a lot to learn mid-series. Brook will also be looking to do this against the returning Pat Cummins on a pitch the groundsman has said will seam, bounce, turn, come on to the bat and be perfect both for taking wickets and making runs, basically doing everything for everyone.

“I’m going to see and adapt. The great thing about batting in the middle order is you get to watch for a little while. I’ll be thinking about my game and the risks and the options I have before I go out there.”

Another view is that Australia have very good bowlers who have applied a constant pressure, and that jumping out to drive can be as much a flinch as a counterpunch. But the fact remains a day of Brook is still the single most potent weapon England have for wresting back some life in this series. And that now, and not later, is the moment to deliver it.