Is English cricket's class and race problem behind their dismal Ashes defeat?

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.

England's awful end to a calamitous Ashes prompts a barrage of criticism from former players and captains calling for change, with the tourists' final collapse described as «ghastly», «pretty pathetic» and the team's «rock bottom». 

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