England captain rejects ‘arrogant’ tag after Ashes loss, defends ‘Bazball’ approach

Before Saturday, the England camp had not conducted any media apart from Mark Wood appearing on a podcast with former team-mate Stuart Broad and a few unanswered questions from reporters at Perth airport.

England will hold two afternoon training sessions at the Gabba and two evening practices under the lights to prepare for day-night Test conditions.

“I understand [the criticism]Stokes said: “We’ve got a pink ball game coming up in Brisbane and we’ve got the opportunity to play pink ball cricket. I don’t want to say it makes sense when you look at it like that but I totally understand it.” [that view].

“But of course it’s much more than that. Conditions in Canberra, which is a different state to Brisbane, will be completely different to what we’ll face going forward.”

England’s dramatic second innings collapse and Travis Head’s brilliant century overshadowed the fact that the tourists looked likely winners at lunch on the second day in Perth.

Despite widespread calls to soften their aggressive approach to Australian conditions, Stokes insisted England were sticking to the all-out offensive strategy they have adopted under Brendon McCullum since 2022.

“Could we have been better at executing what we wanted to do? Absolutely,” Stokes said.

“But we still have a playing mentality of trying to intimidate the opponent while also putting them under pressure.

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“Sometimes when you go out there and make a decision, things don’t always turn out or work the way you want them to.

“And the key to the rest of this tour is to make sure we stay true to our beliefs about how we play our cricket.

“But we also know that we can definitely get a lot better in some areas throughout the Test match.”