“I’m enjoying the time that I’ve got with these guys and we’ve made some progress from when I took over to where we are,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We’re not the finished article, but we’ve definitely improved as a cricket team. We’ve had an identity about us.<\/p>\n
“Now’s the time for us in the last two Tests to really show that identity and try to salvage something from it.”<\/p>\n
The defeat in Adelaide extended England’s winless run in Tests in Australia to 18 matches. They have not won a series in this country since 2010-11.<\/p>\n
In once again going 3-0 down after three matches, they are left to battle against the indignity of a 5-0 clean sweep. Three previous England teams have lost Ashes series 5-0 in Australia.<\/p>\n
England could drop batter Ollie Pope for the fourth Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where a crowd touching 100,000 is expected. Jacob Bethell is the reserve batter in the tourists’ squad.<\/p>\n
If England freshen up their pace attack, Brydon Carse seems the most likely candidate to be left out.<\/p>\n
The visitors also have a decision to make over Shoaib Bashir, who arrived in Australia as their first-choice spinner but has not featured in the first three Tests.<\/p>\n
Leg-spinner Rehan Ahmed is in Australia playing T20 cricket in the Big Bash, but McCullum said he will not look outside his 16-man squad for reinforcements.<\/p>\n
“I can’t imagine we’ll bring anyone in from the outside,” he said. “We’ll have to have a look at what the conditions are in Melbourne and work out what we think is going to be our best team for those conditions and that contest.”<\/p>\n
Following defeat in the second Test in Brisbane, McCullum said his team could not have a “glass jaw”, while captain Stokes said Australia is “no place for weak men”.<\/p>\n
Then, in the run-up to the third Test in Adelaide, Stokes admitted to having “raw” conversations with the England players about his message.<\/p>\n
But opener Zak Crawley later claimed to not be aware of the “weak men” comments.<\/p>\n
When McCullum was asked if the players still have faith in his method, he replied: “I hope so. You’ll have to ask them.<\/p>\n
“I’ll always have the back of my players, and always support them, and I’ll always make sure that I’m protective of them as well in a public forum.<\/p>\n
“That doesn’t mean you don’t challenge privately, but in a public forum, you’re always protective. I guess you’ll have to ask those questions elsewhere, but I wouldn’t imagine anything would change in the coming days as we look to try and salvage something from this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“I’m enjoying the time that I’ve got with these guys and we’ve made some progress from when I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-330629","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}