Ben Stokes believes calling his team “arrogant” is going too far, but he is prepared to take criticism of England’s first Test performance as “rubbish.”
After losing in just two days, Australia’s triumph in Perth has drawn a lot of criticism. Travis Head finished the rout for an eight-wicket victory after England surrendered despite being in a great position on day two—105 up and nine second innings wickets in hand—after losing 9 for 99 due to poor shot selection.
There has been plenty of room for postmortems, especially in the Australian media, given the 11-day interval between the conclusion of the first Test and the start of the second Test at The Gabba on Thursday. Pundits and publications have gathered to criticise England’s strategy both during and after the game. With his piece on Friday, Mitchell Johnson became the most recent former Australian cricket player to try to get his share. The UK has also made similar criticisms.
All but three of the unused squad members will miss the Prime Ministers’ XI match in Canberra this weekend, a two-day pink-ball match before Brisbane’s day-night Test, due to the lack of an intense warm-up before the series, which includes a three-day match against the Lions at Lilac Hill. When you add in paparazzi photos of the team playing golf, it presents an unattractive image of a team that is not fully committed to one of the most anticipated Ashes tours in recent memory.
However, at England’s first formal media appearance since the conclusion of the Perth Test, Stokes was eager to correct the record. England’s Test captain acknowledged that they must wear whatever comes their way before an additional training session at Allan Border Field on Saturday morning, the first of five before the second Test, but emphasised that not all of it was valid.
“Look, you can call us rubbish, call us whatever you want,” Ben Stokes replied.
“We were unable to get the Test match we had hoped for. We were excellent throughout certain parts of that game, but I believe arrogance may be going a bit too far.
However, that’s alright. We’ll accept both the sleek and the rough. I prefer terms like “rubbish,” although I’m not convinced about “arrogant.”
For the PM’s XI game, which begins on Saturday afternoon, Stokes also justified England’s choice to not send more of their first-string players to play against the Lions. Only Matthew Potts, Josh Tongue, and Jacob Bethell are at Manuka Oval; the rest of the Ashes team has been in Brisbane since Wednesday.
Lions captain Tom Haines was had to deal with questions from local media during his news conference on Friday. The questions asked whether England had disrespected the match and, consequently, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Stokes responded, “I do understand it,” to the backlash against skipping the match. The opportunity to play pink-ball cricket is coming up in Brisbane, where we have a pink-ball match. I don’t want to say it makes sense when you look at it that way, but I completely get [their viewpoint].
However, there is clearly much more to it than that. There, in Canberra, a state separate from Brisbane, is where it is. The conditions that we will have in the future will be entirely different.
“You weigh every aspect, including the advantages and disadvantages, regardless of the situation. After that, we talk about it and determine the best preparation, in our opinion. After the test, we get a couple extra days off than we had anticipated. We had to leave and consider how we could make the most of the following few days so that we would be ready for what Brisbane would bring.
“We plan everything as though the Test match would last five days. We only had three days of training scheduled because it didn’t last five days, so that obviously needed to be changed. We have a lengthier build-up for this pink-ball game because of this.”
Rain arrived in Brisbane after nearly three hours of Saturday’s session. Although the forecast is becoming more stable, the team’s preparations and the Test itself may be hampered by the thunderstorms that have plagued the week and are predicted to continue in the coming days.
Going into next week, Australia will be viewed as the dominant force regardless of the weather. Despite their first loss to the West Indies at the Gabba in 2024, they have an outstanding record of 13 wins out of 14 in day-night Test matches. The star with the pink ball is Mitchell Starc, who just took 10 wickets in the first Test and has 81 dismissals at an average of 17.08.
Stokes, who is trying to make amends for Perth’s wrongs, gave a rallying cry to his team and supporters because the odds were stacked against England.
“We did some amazing things in that Test match,” he commented. “We were [essentially] 100 for 1 and put a score on the board that we felt was absolutely defendable thanks to the way we bowled in the first innings. We have all acknowledged and reflected on the fact that there were times during the game when we could have performed much better to give ourselves an even greater lead.
“Learning from it is what we must do, both individually and as a team. We have recognised those instances and discussed them collectively; that is what we must do. We certainly could have done a better job of carrying out our intended course of action. However, once more, our approach to the game is to apply pressure to the opposition while also taking it on ourselves.
Occasionally, decisions you make don’t always work out or turn out the way you have hoped. For the remainder of this tour, adhering to our cricketing principles is crucial. But we also realise that there are other areas in which we could have done much better.
“After that initial loss, we anticipate a large number of disgruntled supporters in England. However, it’s a five-game series, and we have four games left after losing the first one. We are incredibly motivated to win the Ashes, which was our original objective of the series.
India
