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England's Ashes woes across the first three Tests have them in the conversation as their worst team to tour Australia.

Is this the worst England team to tour Australia?

Joe Root's shambolic outfit is careering towards Ashes ignominy, on track to become just the fourth England side in history to suffer a series whitewash Down Under.

Something drastic would have to change on-field - or perhaps even the intervention of further virus-related chaos off-field - for England to avoid the same fate that befell the touring teams of 1920-21, 2006-07 and 2013-14.

In the past, they have at least been in the contest, with Australia's greatest Test outfit pulling off an improbable victory in Adelaide in 2006-07.

In 2013-14, England were in every Test before Brad Haddin often dug the hosts out of several holes.

But this time around, there are few excuses for an England team that finds itself 3-0 down after a comprehensive innings and 14-run thrashing at the MCG.

Put bluntly, the tourists' 68 all out on Tuesday summed up a horror three weeks since the start of the Gabba Test.

It means the current series has been decided inside 12 days of cricket - the fastest Australia have retained the urn since 2002-03 - and the hosts have now sealed the Ashes within three Tests in eight of the past nine home series.

"I'm absolutely gutted," England captain Root said.

"We're bitterly disappointed to find ourselves in this position.

"There are two Test matches to go and we have to try to make sure we come away from this tour with a couple of wins.

"They've definitely outplayed us in the three games. We've not been good enough."

Puzzling selection decisions have hurt England this summer, with veteran quicks Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson left out of the first Test in Brisbane and Mark Wood not picked for Adelaide.

The tourists' bowlers have come in for huge criticism, particularly at Adelaide Oval, where Root admitted they bowled too short.

Anderson, in a column for The Telegraph in England, put that back on the team's support staff for not communicating the relevant analytical data from the dressing room.

In Melbourne it was again the batters, with their woeful 92.5 overs across two innings not befitting of a bowling attack that reduced Australia to 267.

The problem has been from the top, with England's openers failing dismally.

Only once - in the second innings in Brisbane, where Haseeb Hameed and Rory Burns put on 23 - has the first wicket produced more than seven runs.

Root has also been unable to produce his best, called in before the eighth over in four of six innings and still unable to convert a half-century to a hundred.

In many ways, it's symbolic of England's issues in the past decade.

Some 74 batters the world over have averaged at 40 or more in that time. Just two of them are English: Root and Alastair Cook.

The woes didn't end there, with the 54 ducks England recorded in the 2021 calendar year the equal most in history with their countrymen of 1998.

It is fitting of a touring team that could well go down as England's worst in history.