Former Australian cricketer Ed Cowan has unloaded on England, calling them the worst team to tour Australia in the last 20 years.
After a disastrous start to the Ashes series, Cowan believes the shortcomings in this English squad have been laid bare on the biggest of stages in international cricket.
“This is an absolute expose of English cricket,” he told the The ABC Grandstand Cricket podcast.
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“It will actually not matter who they bring in. This is the best of a very average bunch.
“I don’t like hanging crap. Test cricket is bloody hard. There is nowhere to hide.
“I feel for Rory Burns. His technique has been exploited. The pace of the ball. Not so much the movement, but the pace and the bounce.
“All their batsman apart from [Dawid] Malan and [Joe] Root just look technically out of sorts and you can’t fix that in Test cricket.
“The bowling looks ageing.
“It looks slow in parts and it looks like it lacks variation so there is nowhere to go.
“It is fair to say I genuinely can’t remember a worse touring squad in the last 20 years. Maybe the West Indies in the mid-2000s when they had that awkward transition.
“But this could be a huge blowout.”
The Test former opener also expressed his disappointment at how this series is damaging the honour of long form cricket.
“It kind of makes you sad because Test cricket needs great contests. It needs a strong England. It needs a strong Australia and it needs a strong Ashes.
“We are not really seeing that at all.
“England have won two Ashes Tests in Australia in the last 15 years. Like this is not known.
“And beating the crap out of them isn’t fun. It is not good for the game.
“I feel sorry for them. I’m actually starting to feel sorry for the touring team.”
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