Being bowled out twice in a day, as Warwickshire were by Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge on Tuesday, is not a unique ordeal.

County sides, including the Bears, have suffered the unhappy feat before. Alec Bedser once bowled Warwickshire out twice at The Oval on a day when Surrey were all out too.

Thirty wickets fell and the game was over in six hours. Last time it happened to Warwickshire was 1988 against Kent at Edgbaston, though only 16 wickets actually fell because Alvin Kallicharran and Dermot Reeve could not bat due to broken digits.

No, Tuesday’s double collapse by Warwickshire to 121 and 154 all out (from 53 for one and 87 for one), was far from unique. It was still deeply embarrassing, though.

One hesitates, in this season of Bears batting debacles, to stipulate a lowest point, but this is a candidate.

It exploded the morale-boost of the previous game’s win over Essex and showed the frailties which have afflicted senior players all season – Darren Maddy, Jim Troughton and Tim Ambrose together have three 50s in 66 championship innings – still tower.

Clearly, there is no quick fix. The question is, for several key personnel in the side, is there a fix at all?

Can coaching team Ashley Giles, Graeme Welch and Dougie Brown cure this malaise? Do players knocked down again and again this season still have it in them to succeed in first-class cricket?

“These guys are professionals and they are down,” Giles said. “We don’t sit in the dressing room and think this is a bundle of laughs and switch on Neighbours when we are eight down for 100. It bloody hurts.

"I was very embarrassed by the performance at Trent Bridge. I have played in Warwickshire teams who have been rolled over twice in a match but not consistently like has happened to us this year.

“We lost horrendous clumps of wickets. You lose one and suddenly you are seven or eight down. That can’t happen. If it happens once or twice in a season then you just move on but when it keeps happening it’s not good enough.

“It is an incredibly tricky situation we are in because we are not just talking about one or two guys out of form, it’s pretty much the whole of the top order.

"In that situation guys can get very internal and concentrate on ther own woes and worries and not share a lot. And then the situation gets worse.

"After the game on Tuesday we tried to talk some of that out and make a plan for next week and the Essex game. You can’t just walk away from it but then there’s no point in screaming and shouting either, as much as you feel like it.

‘‘For the rest of this season we have to keep our heads high and be positive and work extremely hard.

“The mental side of our situation is the most dangerous thing at the moment. Everyone is struggling and everyone gets more and more internal and it almost becomes self-fulfilling: ‘Oh I don’t want to talk about my game and I don’t walk to talk about anybody else’s game because I’m not doing very well’.

‘‘We are trying to coax that out of people and it’s difficult.”

The defeat at Trent Bridge, albeit against the likely 2010 champions, was a shocker. Yet, strangely, in league table terms, made little difference to Warwickshire’s chances of staying in the championship Division One. With three games left against fellow relegation candidates Essex, Kent and Hampshire, a lifeline still exists.

Now have the beleaguered, embattled Bears got the courage and desire to reach out and clutch it?

“Tuesday was a proper kick up the backside and, psychologically, very very tough,” admitted Giles. “But what do you do? Do you just accept that we are now a Second Division side and that’s where we belong?

“Well, we may end up there but it would be pretty weak to accept that now. We have a lot of fronting up to do and we owe the supporters and the members some fronting up, particularly at Edgbaston in the two games we have got left there.

“We need to get out there and show some of the warrior mentality which we have lacked for the whole season in the championship.”