England lost a battle Down Under, that apparently only skipper Joe Root was fighting.
Australia hammered the visitors within 12 days, as they retained the Ashes series convincingly. The Boxing Day Test wrapped up quickly with Australia taking an unassailable 3-0 lead. While Joe Root wants to bring back the pride in the last 2 matches in Hobart and Sydney but looking at the weak travelling side, it seems an uphill task.
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England's innings and 14-run defeat on Tuesday was their 9th loss in the calendar year. The Three Lions have now equalled an embarrassing record set by Bangladesh in 2003. The collapse of the English line-up this year can be seen by the number of individual runs the players were able to score this year. With 1708 runs this year, Root amassed the maximum for England, following him was Rory Burns who could only manage a bare 513, and as a surprise, under-performing England had more extras than all of their batting line-up. Jonny Bairstow stood at no. 4 with some 390 runs. With Dawid Malan and Jack Leach's duck on Tuesday morning, England is now on the list of another unwanted record. They had 54 ducks in total this year.
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Since 2017-18, Australia has handed Root's men defeat in 9 Ashes matches out of which 7 were at home. In contrast to this, India has constantly raised their bar against Australia. Since 2018, India has won 4 out of 7 matches and has only lost one. Team India registered triumphs at the MCG both in 2018-19 and 2020-21.