Former England captain Michael Vaughan has slammed England’s performance in the Ashes as the visitors collapsed once again in the 4th innings at Hobart as the hosts wrapped up the series by 4-0.
Chasing the target of 271, England openers put on a partnership of 68 runs but the rest of the batters failed to capitalize on that as they lost 10 wickets in space of 56 runs.
“England make too many excuses”- Michael Vaughan
Speaking to Fox Sports, the Ashes 2005 winning captain Michael Vaughan was quite furious with the lack of fight shown by the visitors.
“People can accept losing when you’re playing a better team, and Australia’s a better team, but supporters can’t accept when you throw the towel in, Supporters and people in the game won’t accept when there’s no heart and fight. We saw it in Sydney and I thought Sydney was almost that turning point moment where people accepted it and said, wait a minute, it’s not been easy for the England side but they’ve still shown a huge amount of character, but a few days later in Hobart, they’ve thrown the towel in and that’s something only the players can answer to of why that happened,” Michael Vaughan said.
Vaughan also hit out to the criticism of loopholes in county cricket as he feels that these are just excuses as there can’t be any excuse for not making a single 300+ score in the 5-match series.
“I just think we’re in an era where we make too many excuses for too many people. When you see a team that loses its heart and fight there’s a problem. Now it’s easy to say the problem is the system in the UK, and that’s absolutely right to point out a few changes, but the problem is also inwardly with the players who are playing and they lost the fight and where did they lose that fight?” Vaughan added.
England hasn’t won a test match in Australia since January 2011. Though Vaughan said that there is no doubt that previous era England teams used to face similar results but they used to put up more fight than this current England side. In the 2013-14 tour, England was whitewashed by 0-5, similarly, in the 2017-18 tour, they were beaten by 0-4.
“I used to watch the Ashes in the 90s, yes England were losing but they were competing. The last tours we’ve lost 5-0, 4-0, but I always thought for a couple of days England competed and showed a bit of fight. Whereas on this tour it’s been so predictable that you watch and as soon as the ball does anything you just felt they were going to get blown away,” he added.
England’s next assignment in tests will 3-match series in West Indies in March-April.
Also read “I Am Not Worried About What Happened In That 2018 Series”-Temba Bavuma