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England loses test No. 2

England captain Nasser Hussain said there was no shame in learning from the champion Australian team after another heavy Ashes defeat yesterday.

The Australians followed up their 384-run thumping in Brisbane with an innings and 51-run victory in the second Adelaide Test to lead 2-0 in the series with three Tests to play.

Australia are near unbackable favorites to claim their eighth consecutive Ashes series with a victory in the third Test, starting in Perth on Friday.

In the Adelaide Test, Australia yet again showed the yawning gap between them and England in batting, bowling and fielding.

Speaking after the crushing defeat, Hussain said it came down to individual and team discipline.

"I repeat what I said after the last Test match," Hussain said. "If you don't get your disciplines right here you will get blown away.

"We just have to look at them, there's no disgrace in being beaten by the best side in the world ... I have no shame in saying we can learn from this Australian side.

"It's not a mental thing, it's a technical positive thing and that's where we're being outplayed at the moment in how you play the game of cricket, it's a technical ability thing."

"It comes down to technique and ability of putting the ball in the right areas and when it's not put in the right areas you hit it for four, it's as simple as that which everyone else makes complicated."

Hussain said England did "virtually everything right" on Thursday's opening day when they went to stumps at 295 for four.

"Possibly the things we did wrong were myself getting out (for 47) which was a key moment and Michael Vaughan getting out on the last ball of the day ... we could have ended up 300 for two," he said.

"I think where we lost the game was to lose seven for 47 in the first innings on a flat wicket."

Hussain defended his tactics of setting a spread field for opposing captain Steve Waugh to encourage his batting partner Ricky Ponting to hit a single and get Waugh on strike on Saturday's third day.

Hussain's field placement to exploit a perceived Waugh weakness to short-pitched deliveries rebounded when the Australian skipper scored 34 off 40 balls.

"That was basically [about] a bloke [Ponting] who was 150 not out and another bloke [Waugh] who was struggling a bit and we had the new ball and I knew who our team would rather bowl to at that moment," he said.
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