Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting said
it is probably the worst-looking English side to have toured Australia for the
Ashes series. Ponting’s remarks came after Australia bagged the five-Test
series 3-0 with the win in Melbourne, where England lost the match in three
days. England lost the Melbourne Test by an innings and 14 runs.

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Ponting said the visiting team must go back
to the drawing board if they are to improve their show Down Under in the
remaining two Tests.

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

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“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, so the batters are making bigger scores
and batting for longer periods of time. It might be the exact same blip that
(Australia) had to have three or four years ago.”

England have not won the Ashes in Australia
since 2010-11. They suffered whitewashes earlier in Australia, notably the 2013
series but this time around, seeing the batting capitulate is a new low, feels
Ponting. Barring Joe Root and Dawid Malan, the rest of the English batters were
facing difficulty adapting to the Australian conditions. There has been
absolutely nothing from the likes of Zak Crawley, Haseeb Hameed, Ollie Pope and
even Ben Stokes.

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“Some of the English top-order 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 sub-standard
techniques, then you get what happened today (at the MCG),” added Ponting.

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“The little swing dibbly-dobblers that
are getting them out over there (in county cricket), they’re not facing that at
Test level. They’re facing guys who can actually bowl. What I’ve seen with
their batting, they’re just simply not good enough.”

The fourth and fifth Tests will be played in Sydney and Hobart. The Sydney Test will start on January 5.