The tourists lost spinner Ashley Giles to a broken wrist just before the match and suffered two further worries in the course of the innings defeat.

Michael Vaughan played with his knee strapped in hitting 220 and suffered a painful blow to the shoulder by bowler Jason Gillespie that kept him from fielding during the Australian innings.

"Injuries are something you can't do anything about," captain Nasser Hussain said.

"But the injury situation is ridiculous - I'll leave it to others to work out who is to blame."

"We are really down to the bare minimum with players now."

Hussain said he would get together with coach Duncan Fletcher and telephone chairman of selectors David Graveney to work out a plan for Perth and the forthcoming one-day series.

Among other concerns, batsman John Crawley is struggling to overcome a muscle tear in his thigh.

And all-rounder Andrew Flintoff has been ruled out of the Perth Test after failing to prove his recovery from a hernia operation.

Fast bowlers Simon Jones and Darren Gough have already left for home with serious knee injuries.

Hussain said that England could consider dropping a bowler in favour of an extra batsman on the bouncy WACA wicket, but that he was looking to retain a balance.

"We have to work on individual standards rather than just adding another batsman," he said.

"Standards are so much higher over here; you can get away with things against other countries that you can't against Australia."

Australia, meanwhile, have named the same squad for the third Test in Perth.