Former England captain Michael Atherton has identified the major issues facing captain Joe Root and his struggling side.
The English have lost the first two Tests of the Ashes series against Australia, going down by nine wickets in Brisbane before falling 275 runs short in the day-night Test in Adelaide.
Over the course of the two Tests to date, England has posted scores of 147, 297, 236 and 192, while taking just 11 wickets at the Gabba and 18 at the Adelaide Oval.
Atherton says those two things combined would be providing Root with his biggest headaches.
“I think his biggest issue is the ineffectiveness of some of the bowling compared to Australia who are relentless,” Atherton said on SEN’s Test Cricket coverage on Monday night.
“But I think the biggest problem is the lack of big first innings runs.
“This was a good, pretty, placid pitch at the Adelaide Oval. The kind of pitch where you would hope to be racking up hundreds as individuals and team scores of 450-plus.
“If England don’t do that then they’re going to get beaten heavily in this series.”
England will now prepare for the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne which kicks off on December 26.
They trail the series 2-0 which puts them in an unenviable situation given that only one team in history has been able to win an Ashes from that position when Sir Donald Bradman dragged the Aussies over the line in 1936/37.
With that in mind, Atherton says the only thing the English can work towards now is simply improving their game so they can take heart from being more competitive.
“They have to grasp the fact that they are being well beaten by Australia and their performances have to improve significantly if they are to get anything out of this series,” Atherton added.
“I think I’m right in saying that in the history of the Ashes only one team has come back from two-nil down and that was one driven by the greatest cricketer this game has ever seen. So to expect it again is probably unrealistic.
“But England can improve from where they are right now and they will have taken a little bit of a lift from what happened in the back end of today (Monday).”
Root and co. have some selection decisions to make if they want to improve their first innings totals, with openers Rory Burns and Haseeb Hameed struggling for runs.
Only Root himself and Dawid Malan are the batsmen able to hold their heads high after the first Two tests with averages of 43.75 and 47 respectively.