Former England and Yorkshire off-spinner Richard Dawson writes exclusively for The Northern Echo throughout the Ashes.

THE defeat will be very hard to take for England. I got up about half five, saw the score and I couldn't believe it.

Australia put the pressure on and never let go - Shane Warne is so good at that.

They are such a confident side and they've done it before. If you've done it once you know you can do it again.

They've not given up throughout the entire match and that makes it so hard from England's point of view - knowing you have declared on over 550 in the first innings and you are still not safe.

You've only got to look at the scorecard to see how much they bogged us down on that final day.

You can be positive and look to score runs even when you are looking for a draw but England never really did that.

The pitch looked pretty normal on the fifth day but Warne was top-drawer. He did it again.

You can't complain about our declaration in the first innings, it all boils down to the second innings.

They've not batted well enough - it has not come down to the first three days of cricket.

You can look for excuses all you want. Andrew Strauss was a bit unlucky - he was playing all right and he got a decision against him and Ian Bell's run out certainly didn't help.

England maybe had the rough end of a few decisions but you can't blame that. Look at the last Ashes - a few decisions went in our favour then and we didn't complain.

You cannot control that sort of thing and you've got to look at the bigger picture - Australia had a stranglehold throughout the day.

The way we batted in the first innings was a real positive but it wasn't good enough the second time around.

Having said that, the key thing they've got to look at is how they are going to take 20 wickets.

They've got to be positive - whether it means they bring in Monty Panesar or Saj Mahmood I don't know but I think they have to look at changing things.

If we are to bowl Australia out we need a bowling unit - four or five bowlers not just two. We can't rely on Freddie Flintoff or Matthew Hoggard to do it all by themselves.