England's cricketers: battered, bruised, beaten

The sight of the England captain, Nasser Hussain, knocking over a pair of crutches summed up the defeat in the Ashes series yesterday.

As Australia won the Ashes for a record eighth time in a row, walloping England by an innings and 48 runs to take an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-match series, Hussain's reaction in what he thought was the privacy of the dressing-room was beamed into millions of homes by television cameras.

Hussain was so frustrated by his own dismissal when he had scored 61 – which ultimately contributed to England's defeat, because it left them on 169 for six – that on his return to the pavilion he lashed out at a kit bag, which knocked over a pair of crutches.

That the crutches were there indicates how badly injuries have affected the tourists, but Hussain did not flinch from laying the blame on his team's shoulders.

"We let everyone down, we were embarrassingly poor," he said. "We've not performed really and we have just been left beaten, battered and bruised. We have been carrying a lot of injuries but we were just not good enough." He defended his outburst. "I believe that a dressing room is a sacred place and after the couple of months I've had, I think I'm entitled to kick a few cricket coffins [kit bags]."