England's cricketers have had a miserable six weeks in Australia.
For the first time in more than 60 years, they failed to score 300 in a single innings in an Ashes series.
In six out of 10 knocks, they failed to score 200.
Behind these ugly figures lies another set of statistics that tells a critical story of contemporary English cricket.
Not just of batting incompetence, but how England's Test team came to be selected from a narrow pool of privileged cricketers that does little for either equity or performance.
Tom Brown is a high-performance coach with Warwickshire County Cricket Club and is completing a PhD in talent identification and development in cricket.
Inside the indoor nets at the famous Edgbaston ground in Birmingham, he told the ABC just how skewed England's selections had become.
"We looked through all the specialist batters that debuted (for England in Tests) since 2011, and we found that 95 per cent of them have been white, 77 per cent of them have come from private schools, only 30 per cent of them have managed to average over 30 or more, with one player averaging 40 or more, which was Joe Root," he said.
"Our research highlighted that you were 13 times more likely if you're white and privately educated to be selected as a professional cricketer than if you're white and state educated."
In the UK, around 7 per cent of the school-age population attends what are referred to as independent fee-paying schools. Brown's statistical analysis suggests the England team's top order is a more elitist cohort than what you find in the UK's House of Lords.
This is not only a matter of class. Brown's research focuses on why talented cricketers of South Asian heritage (with roots from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan) have struggled to make it to the top.
"At a recreational level, 30 per cent of the demographic that plays the game in England and Wales are British South Asian," he said.
"That drops to around 20 per cent at the academy (elite junior) level for first class counties, which then drops even further to 5 per cent when it comes to the professional game."
With the help of former England bowler Kabir Ali, Brown is launching the South Asian Cricket Academy to help coaches and players from that background make it to the top.
Kabir, the cousin of star England all-rounder Moeen Ali, says players of his background face cultural barriers in English cricket.
The former fast bowler said coaches can misunderstand players of his background.
What might be a sign of respect or deference in South Asian culture could be misinterpreted as a sign of weakness at a cricket club.
He said Tom Brown's research has shown that even the concept of character can be misinterpreted.
"He went around asking coaches what was good character, and what they said fitted a privately educated young lad," he said.
"A lot of the kids who play here (in Birmingham) are from normal, ordinary schools.
There is no doubt that another barrier to rising through the ranks is institutional racism.
As former Yorkshire player Azeem Rafiq revealed in his testimony to a parliamentary inquiry in the UK last year, players of South Asian background have been subjected to racial harassment and bullying in professional cricket.
England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chief executive Tom Harrison said English cricket was "nearing an emergency" over its inability to address racism, diversity and equity, and that the ECB has struggled to get first-class cricket to "wake up" to the problem.
The report released by MPs earlier this month found that there was "deep-seated" racism in cricket and recommended that public funds for cricket be "dependent on continuous, demonstrable progress in getting rid of racism in both dressing rooms and on the stands".
Caribbean players also under-represented
In the 1980s and 90s, English cricket had a range of players of Caribbean background such as Mark Butcher, Devon Malcolm, Gladstone Small, Chris Lewis and Phil DeFreitas. But from 1995 to 2020, the number of black professional cricketers in the UK dropped by 75 per cent.
In response to these alarming figures, former England cricketer Ebony Rainford-Brent set up the African-Caribbean Engagement (ACE) Programme through the Surrey club based in South London.
ACE's director Chevy Green told the ABC they're trying to get more boys and girls from working class neighbourhoods to fall in love with the game.
"We have a schools program and a community program and we have an academy, and then we are also trying to diversify and get more coaches and volunteers into the game from African and Caribbean heritage," he said.
But there are a number of barriers to poorer kids in South London taking up the game.
"Cricket is an expensive sport," Green said
He said Test cricket's move to pay television in 2005 has also had major repercussions in cutting children off from watching the game.
"Cricket being stopped on free-to-air has been a massive, massive disadvantage to players seeing it, new players being excited by it and then wanting to play," Green said.
"You can't be what you can't see."
It's a view echoed by Phil Walker, editor-in-chief of Wisden Cricket Monthly.
"In 2005, ironically, after England's so-called Great Summer, when they beat the Aussies for the first time in yonks … cricket had its moment," Walker said. "And by September the 12th, the end of the Oval Test match, it had gone to satellite television."
Walker said the decision gave the ECB extra money to pour into the game, but it made cricket inaccessible to large parts of the population. He said the ECB's own research after the event shows it cut off the younger generation.
"I think they surveyed 2,000 children, and they asked them, among various other questions, to name 10 sports off the top of their head," he said.
"So, on a basic, fundamental level, it was a disaster."
What they are missing out on
England's cricket woes can't be pinned solely on a lack of diversity in selections or a decision to sell the Test cricket rights to pay television more than 15 years ago.
In the current Ashes post-mortem, a range of factors are being debated around the structure of the county competition, how much red ball cricket is played and when it's played, whether players should be released to play India Premier League (IPL) in the lead-up to a Test series and whether the coach should be a selector.
But there can be little doubt, if you dilute the talent pool — whether it be in sport, politics or business — it has to have an impact on performance.
Chevy Green hopes the ACE programme can help broaden the base for England's cricketing talent, while exposing more boys and girls to a game that he loves.
"You know, if you open it out and you look into other areas and other communities, then you're going to get different styles of players, different thoughts, different thinking patterns that will help with the cricket on the pitch."
Phil Walker agrees and would like to see more of what he calls "back alley" cricketers and self-taught players break into the English Test team.
"Adil Rashid learnt his cricket in the basement of his dad's two-up, two-down house in working class Bradford in Yorkshire," he said.
"His father is an immigrant from South Asia, and he broke the system.
"He's the outlier, if you like. Someone like Adil and Moeen Ali as well, because they come via the back doors of English cricket.
"Because they're not groomed on the manicured lawns of Millfield School or King's College, they come to the game with a different kind of outlook, a different kind of philosophy, and a different feel for the game."
There are many ways to win a cricket game, and great teams normally contain players with contrasting styles.
A cricket team needs to be able to change gears, to play in different conditions and adapt to a range of circumstances.
All quality teams have a mix of the orthodox and the unorthodox, the brainy and the brawny, the attacking and the defensive.
Tom Brown believes if you continue to pick from a narrow cohort, it makes the team monocultural and less adaptive.
"You end up with a kind of a groupthink — you end up with only one way of solving problems, only one way of looking at things," he said.
"We talk a lot about coaching here in England, and we have our English way of coaching things.
"I wonder would players like (Muttiah) Muralitharan and (Lasith) Malinga have been coached out of their ways in our system?"
For Chevy Green, more investment and accessibility into cricket for players of diverse backgrounds will also be key to future success.
