Atherton Slams McCullum's "Overprepared" Remark: Why It Will Wind Up England Fans

England's 'Bazball' gamble continued to fail, as after a Travis Head storm condemened to a two-day loss at Perth, a shambolic fielding effort and second innings with the bat set Aussies another easy run-chase of 69 runs, which they pulled off without breaking a sweat to take a 2-0 lead in the series after the pink-ball Test at Brisbane and make the next Test at Adelaide from December 17 a must win one for England.

While England's mainstays did not feature in a two-day pink-ball practice match against the Prime Minister XI and travelled straight to Brisbane for training, McCullum said after the match he felt that they had said "overprepared" with five intense training days.

"I think leading into this test match, I actually felt like we overprepared, to be honest. We had five intense training days, and I think sometimes when you're in the heat of the battle, as we all know, I think sometimes the most important thing is to feel a little bit fresh and make sure your top two inches is completely sound. And I think the boys just need a few days off and probably need to change up a few of the training methods a little bit. So we will look at some alternative methods over the next few days," he said.

Speaking on the latest edition of the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast, Atherton said, "It will wind England fans up because what they will see is a team that's not playing a lot and not necessarily practising that much."

"I think what he meant by that was that they arranged, because of that [first] Test finishing early and the fact that they did not go to Canberra (for pink-ball practice match, a two-day match), what was three days practice became five because they booked extra nets."

"And his point is that five days of netting can kind of actually dull your sharpness a bit. You get over-netted. So I knew what he was trying to say, but it was kind of a little bit tone deaf, was not it, and would have wound England supporters up," he added.

England's preparations came under heavy scrutiny as they only played a two-day game against England Lions before the first Test, and their starting XI did not feature in two-day match against PM XI.

Following the match, skipper Ben Stokes had said, "Very disappointing. A lot of it comes down to not being able to stand up to the pressure of this game, this format, when the game is on the line. In small passages, we have been able to bring the game back into some kind of control, and then we have let us slip away. We've done that again here this week, and it's very, very disappointing, in particular, because of the ability of the players that we have in that dressing room."

"To me, it just seems to be a constant theme at the moment, that when you know the game is in a pressure moment, Australia keep outdoing us. They say Australia is not a place for weak men. We're definitely not weak, but we need to find something, because we're two-nil down now, we have got three more games to go, and we need to, sort it."

- ANI