FORMER Australia batsman Dean Jones believes Shane Warne would come out of retirement "in a heartbeat" if offered the chance to succeed Ricky Ponting as Test captain.
The 39-year-old spin legend quit the international game in January 2007 following Australia's Ashes triumph and spent the current series in the commentary box overseeing his team's 2-1 defeat.
England's 197-run victory in the decisive fifth Test
at The Oval meant Ponting became the first Australia skipper in over a century to lose two series here.
"Someone has to be accountable for this and there will be some casualties, there's no doubt about it," said Jones, before speculating on who the potential candidates would be.
"If the selectors or Cricket Australia want to go to someone else for the captaincy, if they're thinking of that, (the options are) maybe give it to Michael Clarke straight away now ... Is he old enough? Is he mature enough now? Will they give it to, say, maybe Marcus North who they have a lot of respect for? Or even Simon Katich?
"Or one more ...? Ask Shane Warne to come out of retirement just for two years, then give it to Michael Clarke.
"A lot of people might be thinking 'that's stupid' but it will take him two months, three months to get himself fit, just let him play the Test matches and, I tell you what, he would do it in a heartbeat.
"I don't think they'll do that, I don't think they'll go that far but it'll be an option, I tell you, that'll be looked at."
Meanwhile, Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland claims the players must be held accountable for their Ashes defeat rather than the national selection panel.
While confirming that CA would conduct a wide-ranging review into the 2-1 series defeat, Sutherland does not believe the series was lost by poor choices at the selection table.
"I think everyone will be looking for people to blame. I don't think that in anyway we can hold the selectors accountable for us losing the Ashes," he said. "At the end of the day, the players go out and do the business on the field.
"It was only six or seven months ago that we had a fantastic series in South Africa where we beat the number one team in the world with a pretty similar line-up.
"The selectors were hailed for their selection, I guess in some ways the perceived risks they took in backing young talent.
"I think it would be jumping to conclusions to be blaming the selectors for this."
Several former Australia players, including Warne, have criticised the national selection panel, headed up by former Australia opener Andrew Hilditch, for opting not to select off-spinner Nathan Hauritz for The Oval, with the pitch receptive to spin for much of the Test.
But Sutherland said he did not believe specific decisions, such as the choice to play Stuart Clark instead of Hauritz, made an impact on the overall result.
He said: "That's something that the selectors can explain for themselves. Whether that had any bearing on the result of the game, who will know?
"We've lost the game by 200 runs, it's a pretty significant defeat, and having a spinner in the side wouldn't have helped us in the first innings where we were bowled out for 160 and effectively lost the game."
While he and the CA board are both keen to conduct a review into how the Australians lost the Ashes, Sutherland said the inexperience of the current team and their inability to perform consistently over the five days of a Test were major factors.
"I don't think Cricket Australia is under any illusions as to where this team is at," he said.
"We're definitely in a rebuilding phase after losing some of the best players to ever play cricket for Australia and, right now, what you get with a young and relatively inexperienced team is some ebbs and flows in performance.
"We saw a little bit of that in the Ashes series. Our best cricket was very, very good, and our not so good cricket, in a couple of critical moments, were really the reasons why we let the Ashes slip."
