Sir Ian Botham has slammed England's performance in the Ashes as "unforgivable".

Australia officially regained the urn on Tuesday morning after beating England by 150 runs in Perth to take a 3-0 lead in the five-game Test, and the legendary Botham was quick to criticise the performance of Alistair Cook's side.

Botham wrote in his column in The Mirror: "The Ashes have gone and simply put, this group of England players has let us down. They have given up the most precious prize in Test cricket without so much as an argument.

"There is little excuse for a team as good as England and with players as good as they have at their disposal to have put up a performance like this.

"Too many quality cricketers have not done everything they could to stop the Ashes from ending up in Aussie hands and that is unforgivable. I said it would be 5-0 and it looks like I was right."

Cook himself admitted that the performance throughout the series has 'not been good enough'.