Ashes 2021-22 | Haven’t seen worse performing team in Australia, says Ricky Ponting about England’s performance
Australia have taken a unassailable 3-0 lead in the Ashes 2021-22
|Ricky Ponting has said that he hasn’t seen a 'worse performing team' in Australia after England lost the first three matches in the ongoing Ashes series. Ponting further opined that England might need to think of a solution to make playing conditions in England more suitable to Australian surfaces.
Ashes 2021-22 has been completely dominated by Australia as they are leading by 3-0 winning the first three fixtures of the series and retaining the Ashes. For England, their batting has disappointed them the most and it all culminated in the Melbourne Test where the English were bundled out on a total of 68 losing the fixture by an innings and 14 runs. Several former cricketers have criticized England for their poor outings in Australia and Ricky Ponting is the latest name to join the bandwagon.Â
Ponting opined that this English side has been the worse performing team in Australia he has ever seen after the first three matches of the series. He further added that England should reset some things in their structure and think about how they can make playing conditions suitable to Australia to improve things.Â
"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.
"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 suffered a whitewash in Australia in 2013, However, this time around the batting is looking in bad shape. No other batsmen except for Joe Root and Dawid Malan have been able to score runs for the team. Even Ben Stokes was not effective with the bat returning to the squad after some time off. Ponting mentioned, without taking names, that some of the players have techniques that are not going to stand up at the Test level.Â
"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 substandard techniques, then you get what happened today (at the MCG)," he concluded.Â
"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."
