Haven't seen a worse-performing team in Australia than England: Ponting

Former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting said the current England Test side is the “worse-performing team” he has seen in Australia. Joe Root's men were the fastest to surrender the Urn after they were skittled out for just 68 on day three of the third Test to lose the match by an innings and 14 runs. England lost the first two Tests by nine wickets and 275 runs at Brisbane and Adelaide respectively.

The 47-year-old has called for an urgent change to England's domestic program, saying the introduction of the Kookaburra ball in county cricket could help England Down Under. "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.

"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. England might need to have a look at how they can make their conditions more suitable to ours.

"They play well in England 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." 

The biggest reason why England lost nine Tests in 2021 -  the joint-highest by a team in a calendar year - was because of their batting. Root had a phenomenal year with the bat, smashing 1708 runs in 29 innings at an average of 63.25, but the England Test skipper hardly got any support from other batters. Apart from Root, only Dawid Malan (308 runs at 34.22) operated at an average of more than 30 in 2021.

"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)," said Ponting.

"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."