The Ashes: Ben Stokes says calling England arrogant is ‘too far’
England had given themselves an extraordinary opportunity after four sessions of the first Test. With a score of 65-1 in the second innings, the visitors took a lead of 105 runs.
But England lost their last nine wickets for 99 runs, including a 3-0 disaster in which Ollie Pope, Harry Brook and Joe Root were dismissed heading for the ball.
The collapse led to further questions about England’s attacking style. While Stokes noted the aggressiveness of Australia’s Travis Head, who scored the second-fastest century in Ashes history to propel the home team to victory, the England captain conceded his side could have been “much better”.
“The important thing for us to do as a team and as individuals is to learn from this,” Stokes said. “We identified those moments and talked about them as a group.
“From an execution standpoint, could we have been better at executing what we wanted to do? Absolutely.
“Sometimes when you go out there and make a decision, it doesn’t always pay off or it doesn’t work out the way you want it to. That’s the key to the rest of this tour, staying true to our beliefs about how we play our cricket, but we also know we can be a lot better in some aspects.”
England had won just one of the previous 17 Tests when Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum took over in 2022.
The improvement in results and the breathtaking style of cricket has re-established the connection between fans and that connection was put to the test last week. Many who travel to Perth spend large sums of money to see England beaten in the first two-day Ashes Test for 104 years.
“We know there will be a lot of disappointed fans after the first defeat,” Stokes said. But this is a five-game series, we have four games ahead of us.
“We lost the first one; we were absolutely desperate to get home to win the Ashes, which was our aim before we started the series, and we made the most of our time by doing everything within our power to go out and allow us to achieve that goal.”
