When a curfew gets breached, who does the buck really stop with? The one who couldn't follow it or the ones who failed to police it?

Especially when it involves a bunch of adults who also happen to be professional athletes, that too at an elite level. And more so when you've got the man who more or less imposed the curfew embroiled right in the middle of the breach.

For all the speculation and debate regarding Ben Stokes' future in international cricket, it's this existential dilemma around curfews that's really been the lightning rod of the latest post-midnight controversy that's gripped English cricket over the last week. As the hosts prepare to take on New Zealand in the second Test at The Oval, a strange sense of calm has settled upon this embattled England team.

To the extent that even four changes, which includes two debutants - and a potential third should Jamie Smith be unavailable on paternity leave - on the back of a pretty famous Test win at Lord's, seems pretty understated in comparison to the utter chaos that the team was engulfed with till only a few days ago.

For now, the English top brass has taken the sensible call of leaving out Stokes and the other guilty party, Gus Atkinson, for the second Test. Along with breaking the glass and getting Joe Root to be the calming balm in the role of the acting captain.

But the issue itself, from the outside anyway, feels rather unresolved with the ultimate outcome still very much very difficult to ascertain. Even as Brendon McCullum expressed his concern over Stokes' well-being as recently as today. It probably also might have to do with the rapid rate at which the narrative in England seems to have shifted from "Stokes surely cannot survive this" to "save Stokes at all costs" in the space of one week.

There have been multiple calls from different quarters of English cricket for the enigmatic Test captain to jump straight back to leading this team, his team, once he's served his one-match suspension. Or at best be back for the home series against Pakistan later in the English summer. To not walk away over what is now being characterised as a minor transgression. But while Stokes trains alongside his Durham teammates with expectations of him featuring for his county in their next Championship game, there's as much clarity at the moment about where his head's really at as there is about why in the first place he chose to break the curfew pretty much at the first given opportunity.

The fact remains that English cricket culture is on trial once again this year, and the world's watching. With a tinge of cynicism but with a greater sense of confusion.

This weekend, an Australian cricketer reached out with an "I told you so" message to back his initial tongue-in-cheek claim, "Wait and watch, they'll turn him into Sir Ben Stokes," on the day the news broke.

It wasn't so much a case of picking on Stokes and kicking him when he was down. But more a drive-by shot fired at how the English cricket ecosystem might react to it. This is not to suggest that Stokes definitely should have lost his job. Or that he shouldn't have a way back into the mix. When you consider team sport, cricket has always seemed to hold its own to much higher moral standards than most others. Maybe it's never quite been able to completely shed its puritanical 'just not cricket' approach to its players.

However, once there was seemingly no case for either Robert Key or McCullum to answer for as the ones policing the professionalism of their team, to expect Stokes to cop harsher punishment than what he did seemed always out of question. You'd have expected for there to be joint accountability in what took place and how it makes them look.

Both Key and McCullum have since spoken about being let down by the man they've backed to the hilt on this high-octane rollercoaster era of English Test cricket. The door though still seems ajar but maybe not wide open for him to return to the mix, even if there's no commitment either way to him continuing as captain.

What has felt a bit odd when zooming in from the outside is the lack of clear acknowledgement that there is a cultural issue for them to address. Or perhaps that the current environment doesn't seem to be creating enough guardrails for some of their players to not slip up repeatedly.

The facts speak for themselves. Firstly, that this latest nightclub escapade comes so close to Harry Brook's indiscretions in New Zealand and the many off-field shenanigans that dominated the Ashes tour, only six months ago. And more significantly, that the selectors couldn't automatically hand over the captaincy, even if on an interim capacity, to the designated vice-captain, because he happens to be Brook. Not to forget Key's suggestion that they might even consider a complete alcohol ban for players and staff going forward.

That naturally brings us back to curfews and what they are good for. Whether such strict measures or constraints really do work in a space where at the end of the day, adults are expected to be adults. As it has shown again, it seems as futile an exercise as going up against a rugby team in a nightclub.