Ashes flops worst side, says Ponting

Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting has labelled England the worst performing team to tour Down Under following their humbling Ashes campaign.

Australia have guaranteed retention of the urn inside 12 days of cricket – England spent longer in quarantine before the start of the tour – as an inningsand-14-run win at Melbourne moved them into an unassailable 3-0 lead.

The tourists’ collapse to 68 all out in the second innings of the Boxing Day Test was labelled “embarrassing” by a couple of former players and Ponting believes many of their batters are not up to scratch at the highest level.

“I don’t think I’ve seen a worse-performing team in Australia than what I’ve seen over the last three games,” Ponting told cricket.com.au.

“Some of the English toporder batters that I’ve seen in the last couple of tours, without giving names, there’s some techniques there that I just know are not going to stand up at Test level.

“In challenging conditions and world-class bowlers up against substandard techniques, then you get what happened (at the MCG). What I’ve seen with their batting, they’re just simply not good enough.”

The fallout has started with speculation on the positions of captain Joe Root and head coach Chris Silverwood while there has been no lack of soulsearching about county cricket and whether it is producing players ready for Tests.

Ponting feels one solution could be to introduce the Kookaburra ball in the LV= Insurance County Championship, emulating how Australia adopted the Dukes in 2016-17 to help prepare their batters for the 2019 Ashes.

“We’ve been through this in Australia,” Ponting added.

“You wind the clock back a few years ago when we had our struggles in England, we changed conditions, we changed the ball, we changed everything because we were poor in those conditions.

“England might need to have a look at how they can make their conditions more suitable to ours. They play well in England still but they don’t play well when they come here – so maybe they play more with the Kookaburra ball.

“Maybe they flatten the wickets out a little bit so there’s not as much swing and seam. It might be the exact same blip that (Australia) had to have three or four years ago.”

Chris Woakes meanwhile has endorsed Root continuing as captain despite an abject showing in the Ashes.

He will overtake predecessor Sir Alastair Cook’s record of 59 Tests at the helm when he leads the side out in Sydney on January 5.

Asked if the players backed Root despite falling 3-0 down in Australia, Woakes said: “Absolutely. Joe is a great cricketer, he’s got a great cricket brain and I think his record as England captain is actually pretty good.

“Definitely it feels like Joe will continue. Hopefully he will. It’s clear that the captaincy isn’t having an effect on his batting, which a lot of the time with captains can be the case.

“The fact that he’s scoring the runs he is is great for the team. It would be great if we could help him out with that and score a few more runs around him.

“Joe is a world-class player who has obviously had a fantastic year. When a guy bats as well as he has you would expect us to put in a lot stronger performances than we have.”

Woakes was one of 10 England players to return to the MCG nets on what should have been day four of the Boxing Day Test, as work began on averting an Ashes whitewash.

A resounding defeat on the third morning in Melbourne was England’s ninth of the year – an unwelcome record – which left Australia to fill their unexpectedly free afternoon with an impromptu party on the outfield.

DEJECTED: England captain Joe Root cannot hide his disappointment in Melbourne.