Ian Botham led an onslaught of criticism for England's Ashes failures after Joe Root's team capitulated pitifully to lose the final Test in Hobart.
Botham was joined by fellow former England captains Alastair Cook, Michael Vaughan and David Gower in picking apart another wretched display, with Australia tying up a 4-0 series victory.
England sit at the foot of the World Test Championship, and Botham said the culture of English cricket needed to change, with the heavy emphasis on domestic limited-overs competitions harming the five-day team.
Speaking on Channel 7, Botham said: "It's been embarrassing, if I'm honest. Gutless.
"The way they performed today disappointed me and will have disappointed everyone back home."
England went from 68-0 to 124 all out, the final ignominy from a shambolic tour performance as Australia won by 146 runs.
"The one thing we need to do right now is take our heads out of the sand and pull together and prioritise red-ball cricket," Botham said. "If we're not careful, the eskimos will be beating us."
Cook, Joe Root's predecessor as captain, found it a jarring watch as England went from building a solid foundation to outright carnage, unable to hold back Australia's victory charge.
"There was no resilience there. As soon as they get under pressure, you seen how much resolve there is," Cook said.
"That was very, very tough viewing and that has to be our rock bottom. There cannot be any worse a place in terms of getting bowled out in an hour and a half."
Speaking on BT Sport, Cook added: "As a batter and a professional who plays games of cricket, you get bowled out in a session once or twice in a career.
"You see a batting line-up devoid of all confidence and belief, that once you lose one wicket or two wickets, nobody's going to step up and stop that slide.
"You can talk all you want about it in the dressing room, but until some people grab this team by the scruff of the neck and move it forward themselves, I can't see what's changed."
Vaughan, on Twitter, said England had carried through 2021's "year of the batting collapse" into this year, adding: "You can cope with losing but not when you throw the towel in."
Gower suggested the positive messages that Root and coach Chris Silverwood attempted to deliver were misleading.
"I think we understand very easily that neither Joe Root or Chris Silverwood are going to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth under these circumstances," Gower said.
"Both are under pressure for different reasons. Joe has handled it well, kept a smile on his face. When you see him run out to bat today you can see there is a man who wants to do his best to finish on a high note, but he is not being supported.
"Silverwood's role is a different one because he is fully implicated in selection, and selection's been one of the huge talking points on this tour, right from Brisbane onwards."
For the first Test at the Gabba, England went into the match and series with star bowlers Stuart Broad and James Anderson mystifyingly left on the sidelines.
"There were jaws dropping at home and in Brisbane when the team was announced and when events unfolded," Gower said.
Also speaking on BT Sport, Gower said he had "genuine sympathy" for Root given the focus on white-ball cricket. Although England won the World Cup, in Test cricket they are firmly in the doldrums.
"This is the oldest, most important form of the game," Gower said. "We need to defend it, we need an England team that plays it well, that is not languishing at the foot ... barely even at the foot of the World Test Championship.
"These things really annoy people and apparently it's really annoying me at the moment.
"When you're going to try to be constructive, you look at personnel for sure, so there will be people fearing for their position in the side. Then you also have to consider who else is there to take over. There are players out there who would hope they might get a go as a result of other people's failures, but they've got to show character."
Record-breaking Root edges England closer to Sri Lanka victory
Joe Root hit a record-breaking century as England edged closer to sealing their series victory over Sri Lanka at Lord's.
Root, who equalled Alastair Cook's record during the first innings of the second Test, made 103 from 111 balls for his 34th Test ton.
England resumed on 25-1 at the start of day three, with Root leading the way for the hosts and the crowd rose as one when a sweeping four completed his landmark century.
He helped his nation set their opponents a target of 483 after they were 251 all out.
As the light faded over Lord's, so too did Sri Lanka's momentum in their record-attempting chase, with Gus Atkinson and Olly Stone claiming Nishan Madushka and Pathum Nissanka respectively.
Play was eventually halted due to bad light, and called off to be resumed on Sunday with the tourists at 53-2 with Dimuth Karunaratne (23) and Prabath Jayasuriya (three) at the crease.
Data Debrief: Root revels on record-breaking day
Day three of the second Test belonged to Root, whose century was also his quickest in Test cricket.
Adding to his 143 in England's first innings, he registered two tons in a match for the first time, while becoming only the fourth player to achieve that feat in a Test at Lord's.
Root also joins Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar in scoring 5,000 Test runs in two different decades, while closing the gap on Cook's all-time England tally (12,472) to just 95.
If that was not enough for him, he also took the catches for both of Sri Lanka's wickets, making him the first England player to reach 200 in Test cricket.
Last Hurrah: Dwayne Bravo to call time on CPL career after this year's edition
Former West Indies all-rounder Dwayne Bravo says this year’s edition of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) will be his last hurrah as he announced his retirement from the tournament on Saturday.
Bravo, who represents the Trinbago Knight Riders, made the revelation on his Instagram account hours ahead of the franchise’s opening contest against St Kitts and Nevis Patriots in Basseterre, scheduled for 7:00pm.
“It's been a great journey, and I'm looking forward to playing my final professional tournament in front of my Caribbean people," Bravo said in his post.
“TKR is the place where everything started for me and will end with my team,” he added.
The 40-year-old’s post all but indicates the end of a decorated professional career, as he retired from international cricket in 2021 after the T20 World Cup and also announced his retirement from the Indian Premier League (IPL) a year later after being part of four title-winning Chennai Super Kings campaigns.
Bravo, known for his flair and skillful batting and bowling, is currently the CPL’s highest wicket-taker with 128 scalps in 103 games at an average of 22.40 and economy rate of 8.69.
In fact, Bravo is the leading wicket-taker in all T20s, with 630 scalps in 578 matches. He has also scored 6,970 runs with the bat.
No doubt the electrifying Trinidad and Tobago stalwart will go down as one of T20's early legends, having played seven World Cups in the format, winning two titles, as well as over 15 franchise league titles. He is the first bowler to get to 500 T20 wickets.
CWI targets domestic T20 competition in 2025 to identify Caribbean representative(s) for 2028 Olympic Games
Cricket West Indies (CWI) president Dr. Kishore Shallow says plans are already afoot to host a domestic T20 competition next year to determine the Caribbean representative(s) for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Shallow, once again welcoming cricket’s return to the Olympic Games, pointed out that his administration is already in dialogue with the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) hierarchy to stage the domestic competition in 2025.
Cricket, which last featured at an Olympic Games in 1900, was always set for a long-awaited return to the global multi-sport showpiece, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) last year confirmed it and four other sports—baseball/softball, flag football, lacrosse, and squash—for the LA Games.
“To add cricket to the agenda in the next Olympics is certainly going to be something tremendous, as we did in the Commonwealth Games a couple years ago when we had one of our teams representing the females. We at the time chose our original women’s tournament, and the winner at the time was Barbados, so they represented the region,” Shallow said.
“We anticipate something similar will be done unless they tell us all the teams can come and participate, which would be ideal, but it is unlikely for that to happen,” he added.
Shallow also explained that the CPL champions cannot represent the region at the Olympic Games given that the tournament is franchise-based and involves players from other parts of the world.
As such, he revealed that he has engaged CARICOM leaders regarding plans for a domestic T20 competition from which the winner or top finishers would secure the coveted Olympic Games spot(s).
“We have been in discussion with CPL for them to fund a domestic T20 tournament starting next year. I think Miles Bascombe and his team have already scheduled a window for that next year in 2025. Once we are able to have that tournament, then we can use that to determine which team or teams will participate in the Olympics on behalf of CWI,” Shallow shared.
“We can’t use the CPL as it is now because it’s franchises. But in the domestic tournament that we’re having, which will still have a commercial model to it but not to the extent of CPL, but that will more than likely be territories instead of franchises, so we will be able to identify teams,” he noted.
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