At the end of the first Test of the Ashes in 2023, Australia beat England in a big way. When England won the game by just two wickets on Day 5 of the match, the captain of England, Ben Stokes, was asked a lot of questions about why he had declared the test over at the end of Day 1. On Day 1 of the first Test, England was batting with 393 runs and 8 wickets. It is also important to note that star batsman Joe Root was still not out at 118 when the game was called. As Australia won the game, many experts, including former Australian Test captain Tim Paine, questioned Stokes’ choice.
The 38-year-old thought that Stokes’ choice to end the innings early was a little bit about his pride.
Tim Paine said that the game was over quite early because Joe Root was on strike.
“I think they will in the long run. It will be very interesting. I sometimes wonder, “When you have aggressive players like Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes, who is in the locker room questioning the decision to declare on Day 1?” Tim Paine said this on the SEN podcast ‘Whateley’.
“Are people going to stand up and say that cricket is fun to watch? That’s great, but right now the best batsman in the world has 120 runs and is not out. He was scoring at a rate of 5.50 runs per over, so it wasn’t like they were just standing still. The game was moving quickly in their direction. So I wonder how much of that is just ego getting in the way, and we’re just going to play this way,” he said.
Ben Stokes tried to make the Australian openers uncomfortable at the end of Day 1, but Usman Khawaja and David Warner were able to avoid being hurt and take the game into Day 2.
Also, England’s move didn’t go as planned, since Australia won a great game thanks to Pat Cummins’s great batting on Day 5.
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