England arrived Down Under with a lot of expectations under the regime of Ben Stokes and McCullum, but ended up conceding the Ashes urn in just 11 days -- the joint-second quickest in more than a century.

The Three Lions suffered back-to-back eight-wicket losses in Perth and Brisbane, before facing an 82-run defeat at the Adelaide Oval.

While the visitors salvaged some pride with a gutsy four-wicket victory at MCG, Australia bounced back to win the Ashes finale in Sydney by five wickets and clinch the series 4-1.

In his column for Sportstar, legendary India batter Sunil Gavaskar minced no words as he lambasted the English team for the Ashes debacle.

While Gavaskar said neutral fans didn't expect much from the Stokes-led side in Australian conditions, he mocked the English media for not being able to smell the coffee and hyping their team up regardless.

“England’s performances in most sports are a huge let-down when set against the write-ups their teams receive from people who have hardly, if ever, played any sport at the highest level. The disappointment, therefore, is far greater when the teams show that they are more paper tigers than real ones,” Gavaskar wrote.

“England’s capitulation to Australia by a 4–1 margin was, therefore, not really a surprise for the non-English. It is extremely tough for visiting teams to win a Test series anywhere, especially in Australia and India. India themselves, however, were beaten comprehensively by New Zealand a couple of years ago and by South Africa late last year,” he added.

With Bazball philosophy failing to hold up against strong teams like Australia and India, many former cricketers and experts have suggested the English management to ditch the high-risk approach.

Sharing his two cents, Gavaskar wrote: “McCullum brought the same freshness to England’s cricket, and that took the rest of the cricketing world by surprise. Gone was the dreary, dull cricket they played, and suddenly, the opposition did not know how to counter it. However, as with so-called mystery bowlers, the surprise wore off. Once teams realised that England had little answer whenever the ball deviated, provided the pitches were not flat, the problems became evident.”

“With their media making excuses for them about pitches when they were overseas, the batters refused to change their approach and bat according to the situation. With the management also ignoring some of the unforgivable and irresponsible shots played by the batters, the fear of being left out simply is not there. Valuing playing for your country and putting a minimum price of a century on your wicket is something only the great Joe Root does. The others could not be bothered, as they knew they were unlikely to be left out of the squad,” he remarked.

The former India captain further stated that the fearless cricket English media was going crazy about was reduced to “couldn’t-care-less cricket” in Australia.

“What the media calls fearless cricket today often looks more like couldn’t-care-less cricket. With the guarantee of a central contract and the various T20 leagues around the cricketing world, there is no worry about how to put food on the table, which was the case when these facilities were not there and losing a Test place meant going back to mundane first-class cricket, where one hardly earned enough, let alone saved for a rainy day,” wrote Gavaskar.

“How many in the England team that lost the Ashes series can put their hands on their hearts and say that they gave it everything, not just physically but, more crucially, temperamentally, in the series? You tell me,” he concluded.