"I expect a response from everyone this week," said Root. "The scoreline would suggest they're absolutely a far better team than us and I don't think they are. If we perform anywhere like we can do, we'll out them in an uncomfortable position. We'll push back and we'll find ourselves in a very different situation leaving this ground.
"There was a lot of frustration (in Adelaide). Purely because of the basic mistakes that we've been making. And we've done it twice in a row. And, as I said to the group, I don't think they're that much better than us in these conditions."
Root has made 89 and 62 in this series without going on and twice his dismissal has sparked collapses that cost England in Brisbane and Adelaide. He has scored eight fifties in Australia in 11 Tests since 2013 without a century, and lifting that curse would raise the mood of his battered team.
"I'm confident I can in these next three games bang out a hundred in these conditions," said Root. "I feel in a really good place with my batting. I know that's a brave thing to say but that conversation rate, this year, it's not been an issue at all. I feel like I have managed that well and an understanding of how I want to score my runs. There's clarity there, I just need to be putting myself in those positions, just have the bit between my teeth, over my dead body."
With Rory Burns to be dropped England will field a team with four changes. Zak Crawley will open and Jonny Bairstow has replaced Ollie Pope. Burns has played 31 Tests and the decision to drop him ahead of Haseeb Hameed has been made with the future in mind.
Bairstow and Pope have been swapping places at number six for half the year without much success. Pope has averaged 21, Bairstow 25. England need much better than that if they are to stage some sort of comeback. Bairstow's time as a Test cricketer is running out whereas Pope is the most talented player of his generation; a batsman with a high ceiling.
He just needs to fight through this lull and find a way but England look at the top two of Hameed and Crawley and want more experience in Bairstow further down. Pope can come back from being left out of such a prestigious game.
England's two other changes come in the bowling attack with Mark Wood replacing Chris Woakes and Jack Leach coming into the team in place of Stuart Broad.
It is not just players fighting for their jobs. Silverwood and his coaching team have made selection mistakes and it falls on them to answer why England are not able to adapt to Australian conditions given the length of time that has supposedly gone into planning. It is always different in reality than in practice, but the fact that pitches are bouncier in Australia and balls are left on length is hardly a mysterious new phenomenon.
Root has never won a Test match in Australia, let alone scored a hundred. He will equal Sir Alastair Cook's record of captaining England 59 times in this game. How he would love to repeat Cook's performance of four years ago - 244 not out, the highest ever score by an overseas player at the MCG.
Another defeat though will bring the end closer and Root did not look beyond this series when asked about his future. "I'll worry about that at the end of the series, all I can control is the next game. Those decisions are above my head but I'll make sure from a team point of view we'll show a lot more this time," he said.
England:
Crawley, Hameed, Malan, Root, Stokes, Bairstow, Buttler, Wood, Robinson, Leach, Anderson.
Australia:
Warner, Harris, Labuschagne, Smith, Head, Green, Carey, Cummins, Starc, Lyon, Boland.
