Coach Brendon McCullum said England trained “too much” while captain Ben Stokes raised questions about his side’s mentality after their crushing defeat by Australia in the second Test.
Though England showed some fight, they were thrashed by eight wickets in Brisbane to go 2-0 down in the five-match Ashes series.
Their preparation for the highly anticipated contest has been questioned throughout, with England playing only one, intra-squad warm-up match before the series and skipping a pink-ball warm-up before the second Test.
“We had five intense training sessions leading into this game,” McCullum told BBC Test Match Special.
“Sometimes there is a tendency to overdo things to make up for it.
“If anything, we trained too much.”
He added: “As we all know in this game it is played in the top two inches.
“We all have to find a way that ensures that we feel prepared physically, technically and we are ready for the battle, but also to make sure we are fresh and make sure we can make those decisions in the heat of the games.”
Stokes led the resistance on the final day by surviving 152 balls for 50 runs but England lost 4-17 after batter Will Jacks was dismissed, leaving Australia a chase of 65 runs in their second innings.
Stokes denied England’s problems are down to skill and instead questioned why they have been unable to capitalise in key moments.
“They are all incredibly talented players but if you can’t put it down to a skill thing you start to wonder what is it?” Stokes said.
“Do we need to start thinking about what mentality we are taking into those pressure moments?
Stokes described the problems as a “constant theme”.
“When the game is in a moment of neither here nor there, Australia have managed to get through those periods and outdo us,” he said.
Those moments can be traced back to the fifth Test against India in the summer, possibly back to the 2023 Ashes when England blew good positions in the first two Tests and also went 2-0 down.
England’s recent struggles include:
Stokes said he would have conversations with his players and believes they can come from 2-0 behind to win for the first time in an Ashes series.
While saying he did not believe his players were weak, he said: “There is a saying that we have said a lot here – Australia is not for weak men.
“A dressing room that I am captain of is not a place for weak men either.
“We need to dig deep, I need to dig deep.”
McCullum said England, who were also 2-0 down in the 2023 Ashes and came back to draw 2-2, were “slow to adapt” to conditions at the Gabba.
“We have been here before and we have to make sure to stay tight as a group and iron out a couple of the chinks that we have shown in the last two Test matches,” he said.
“When you come to Australia you can’t be below your best. You need to make sure you seize every opportunity.
“In this Test match there were a few moments we had the ascendancy with the bat and we let that slip. And there were times where we didn’t execute with the ball as well as we should have.
Australian Open – final leaderboard
-15 R Neergaard-Petersen (Den); -14 C Smith (Aus); -13 SW Woo (Kor); –12 M Hollick (SA); -11 A Scott (Aus)
Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen held his nerve on the final hole to win the Australian Open and claim his first DP World Tour title.
Tied with former Open champion Cameron Smith heading to the last, Dane Neergaard-Petersen sank a difficult up-and-down for par, while the Australian three-putted for bogey.
Neergaard-Petersen, 26, carded a one-under-par 70 to finish on 15 under at the Royal Melbourne.
“I’m really at a loss for words. It’s been a battle all day.”
South Korea’s Kim Si Woo was third on 13 under, while Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy finished eight strokes off the pace.
Neergaard-Petersen, who led by two shots overnight, slipped back into a share of the lead with Smith after bogeying two of the first nine holes.
World number two McIlroy called on organisers to reschedule the tournament to help attract a stronger field next year.
World number one Scottie Scheffler opted to play in the Hero World Challenge in New York instead.
“I would love to have a few more players come down and play, but it’s hard,” said McIlroy.
“There are three tournaments going on in the schedule this week.
“There needs to be conversations had with people much more important than me that set the schedules.”
The Australian Open marked the end of McIlroy’s season, which brought a long-awaited Masters title, a seventh Race to Dubai success and a successful Ryder Cup defence with Europe.
“I’m excited to have little bit of downtime, finally reflect on everything, maybe watch a few of the tournaments back. I’ve not really let myself do that too much,” he said.
At least three people have been killed and six injured in a car explosion outside a police station in Mexico’s western state of Michoacan, according to local and federal security officials.
The blast on Saturday took place at a central avenue in Coahuayana, the attorney general’s office said in a statement.
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“The driver died at the scene, while two other people died in the regional hospital, and six others were injured,” it added.
The two victims who died in the hospital were community police officers, said Hector Zepeda, commander of the Coahuayana community police. He said the remains of some of the victims were found scattered in the area of the explosion, which also damaged nearby buildings. Images circulating online showed a completely burned-out vehicle.
The explosion came as the federal government has stepped up security activities in the state following the recent assassinations of an outspoken representative of the lime growers and a popular mayor standing up to the drug cartels.
Last month, President Claudia Sheinbaum sent 2,000 troops – on top of the 4,300 permanent ones and 4,000 in neighbouring states – to Michoacan following the high-profile killings.
“With this operation [from the federal government], a lot of marines came,” Zepeda said. “We stopped doing patrols because the operation is going on.”
The community police, which patrol various rural communities, trace their roots to the civilian vigilante forces that took up arms more than a decade ago to defend communities from the cartels, and then were formalised by the state.
At least three of the six drug cartels that the United States has designated as “terrorist” organisations – Jalisco New Generation, United Cartels and The New Michoacan Family – operate in Michoacan, in addition to a number of other splinter groups, some supported by the Sinaloa cartel.
Last year, some 3,000 explosive devices were seized in the state compared with 160 in 2022. So far this year, there have been more than 2,000, according to the state security agency.
I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here star Jack Osbourne has revealed that he is to become a dad again with second wife Aree Gearhart. This will be the couple’s second child but Jack’s fifth as he has three children from his previous marriage.
And one thing that Jack, 40, is perhaps most proud of is that he was able to share the happy news with his dad Ozzy Osbourne, before he died in July.
In a recent interview following his exit from the ITV show, Jack said: “It’s awesome. We’re super-excited. It was sort of planned, I should say. It was maybe a little earlier than expected. But it’s definitely something that we were wanting to pursue and somehow it happened, miraculously.”
It’s believed that Aree is 28 weeks pregnant. And Jack was not only happy about being able to share the news with his late father, but the upcoming birth has been a welcomed distraction from grieving Ozzy absence.
“I think it’s been partly a healthy distraction, partly healing — probably in that kind of ‘full cycle’ category, in a weird way. It’s very much taken energy out of the grieving side of things and parked in a bit more hopefulness,” he told The Sun on Sunday.
Jack secretly married Aree two years ago, a year after the arrival of their first daughter Maple. At the time, Jack shared with news with his fans by posting: “Something really cool happened. I married the most amazing women I’ve ever met. All in.”
Jack is already a father to Pearl, 13, Andy 10 and Minnie, seven, who he shares with ex wife Lisa Stelly.
Jack and Aree started dating back in 2019 and decided to publicly make their relationship official by attending the American Music Awards in the November of that year.
The couple’s joy comes a few months after the world was left mourning the loss of the rock icon after it emerged that he had died on July 22 at the age of 76.
Honouring the memory of the globally renowned musician, Jack posted an emotional tribute a month after Ozzy died, which also included pictures of his children.
It read: “I haven’t really wanted to post anything since the passing of my father. My heart has hurt too much. He was so many things to so many people, but I was so lucky and blessed to be apart of a very small group that got to call him ‘Dad,’ “
Jack added: “My heart is full of so much sadness and sorrow, but also so much love and gratitude. I got 14,501 days with that man and I know that is such a blessing.”
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