4 striking similarities between the last two Ashes series

#3 Joe Root's conversion woes

Joe Root

Joe Root would have been relieved after England tied the series at the Kennington Oval, but that doesn't hide the fact that he became the first English skipper to have drawn or lost an Ashes series at home in the last 18 years.

Captaincy is a tricky task and it seems to have gotten the better of Root. The England skipper is facing a great dilemma with the bat right now - a crippling inability to convert 50s into big scores. Root's lack of centuries has hurt the English team considerably over the last few years.

There's no denying that Root is one of the finest players of his generation, but he needs to do more to convert those 50s. In the 2017-18 Ashes series, Root scored five half-centuries but failed to convert even one into a 100. It was the same story this time around as well as he scored 50+ four times but ended the series without a hundred.