England’s ambitions of taking part in the most competitive Ashes in Australia in the last 40 years came crashing down in no time. In three painful matches agonisingly spread across the past five weeks, England saw their dreams of regaining the urn come crashing down, sealed with an 82-run loss in Adelaide to go 3-0 down in the series.
Ben Stokes has plenty of thinking and talking to do as England captain in the wake of this disastrous series, with the ‘Bazball’ mantra not quite coming through. A bitter pill to swallow, Stokes didn’t try to gloss things over while reflecting on the loss in the immediate aftermath.
“That dream that we came here with is now over, which is incredibly disappointing. Everyone is hurting and quite emotional. We’ve got two more games to go and that is the focus now. We came with a goal in mind we couldn’t achieve, and it hurt and it sucks,” said Stokes at the post-match presentation.
‘They’ve been able to outdo us on a much higher level’
Reflecting on the key differences between the two teams, given that the talent in both was seen as relatively on par, Stokes admitted that England simply couldn’t match the consistency Australia could offer despite the chopping and changing in their team.
“Australia have been able to execute things on a much more consistent basis than us, with the ball, with the bat and the field. They’ve been able to outdo us on a much higher level,” explained Stokes. “We’ve shown passages in these games, and even this week we did well to take it where we did in the fourth innings and looked like we were on for another heist.”
‘We were confident of having a good chance…’
Expanding further, Stokes stated how England had a slight advantage early in the Test in Adelaide, but squandered it with a very poor showing with bat in the second innings. In response, Travis Head’s mammoth 170 swung the game heavily in Australia’s favour – and while England brought the target within 82 runs, none of their batters could match Head’s ability to score a big defining century.
“Looking back on this game, losing the toss and going in to bowl and keeping Australia to an under-par score, and not being able to respond with the bat when we knew we had the opportunity to put up a big score,” said Stokes. “But then to fight back with the ball like we did yesterday morning, we were confident of having a good chance of chasing it down because of how good a wicket it was. Losing the three wickets at the end of yesterday set us back.”
Stokes saw the improvement in his team
However, Stokes was nonetheless happy to take away some positives from the match, particularly the fact that England’s players turned up ready to show some determination and some fight as he had demanded in the build-up to the match.
“Last week there was stuff going around of how I wanted to see a bit more from the team, and I can definitely say I saw that this week. Some of the guys lower down the order showed that courage and fight and responsibility that I was asking for,” said Stokes, crediting his team. “We’ve been on the wrong side of the result but there’s a lot we can take from this game and we’ve learnt a lot about our team.”
End of the day though, the Ashes are gone, set to remain in Australia again, with a humiliating whitewash still on the cards. Stokes took responsibility and admitted Australia weren’t flattered by the 3-0 lead, but promised England would remain competitive in the remainder of the series.
“Our execution has not been good enough to come to Australia and compete with these guys, and I think the scoreline reflects that. We aren’t going to just fall over and let it play out, we will leave everything out in the field like we do,” concluded the England captain.
