For the better part of the Test match, Joe Root lead England had an upper hand in the Melbourne Test match till rain played a spoilsport forcing the umpires to abandon the match. This left the England captain disappointed after he felt that they were in with a chance to win the Test match.

"To come off three very difficult games, to put in a performance like that was very pleasing," Root told reporters after play on Saturday (December 30). "That's what we are about as a side. That's a fair reflection of what we are capable of. [I'm] disappointed that we couldn't quite crack it open today but we tried absolutely everything and the effort from all the guys was there all day."

"In terms of our squad, the character is something that I never question," added Root. "The way we apply ourselves is always there. After three tough games, to come back and put in a performance as good as that was extremely pleasing for me as the captain. They're the sort of responses you want to see from your players. We are a better team than what we have played on this trip. That's a benchmark now for us.

"The way we've been preparing has been exceptional the whole trip. The application, they way we go about it in practice, the energy guys put in, you can see the desire that's there. That's never been questioned the whole time.

"Of course we didn't want it to be a whitewash but we came into this game excited about winning, making sure the main focus of the group was to win this game and then go to Sydney and win there. It wasn't hard to get the guys in the right frame of mind for that. They had a lot of disappointment coming away from Perth and you could see in the way they went about training that they wanted to prove people wrong."

England in the process have successfully avoided a whitewash, unlike the last time when Australia hosted England for an Ashes series in 2013-14 also putting an end to the careers of Kevin Pietersen and Graeme Swann.

The final Test match in Sydney starts from January 4, 2018.