Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting has expressed his shock at England's capitulation in the opening three Tests of the ongoing Ashes series. Ponting said he couldn't recall "a worse-performing team in Australia than the current English side after the Joe Root-captained team meekly lost the first three matches of the series to end hopes of regaining the Ashes urn. "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," said Ponting. "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, 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."
Ponting also criticised the England batting line-up, saying some of the team's batters aren't up to the mark in Tests.
"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," he said.
"In challenging conditions and world-class bowlers up against sub-standard techniques, then you get what happened today (at the MCG).
"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."