Brisbane [Australia], November 29 : England captain Ben Stokes says he is ready to accept criticism calling England's showing in the opening Test rubbish, but believes describing his team as arrogant goes a step too far, as per ESPNcricinfo.
England have faced severe backlash after their two-day defeat to Australia in Perth. Despite being in a strong position on day two, leading by 105 runs with nine wickets still in hand, they collapsed dramatically, losing 9 wickets for 99 runs due to poor shot selection, before Travis Head sealed an eight-wicket win for the hosts.
Former players and pundits have criticised England's approach both during the match and around it.
Questions have been raised about England's preparation, a low-intensity three-day warm-up against the Lions, a two-day pink-ball fixture ahead of the day-night Test in Brisbane. Add to that paparazzi photos of players golfing, and the narrative has been built of a team not fully switched on for one of the most highly anticipated Ashes tours in recent years.
Speaking at England's first official media interaction since the Perth loss, Stokes clarified the situation. Ahead of an extra training session at Allan Border Field on Saturday, the first of five before the next Test, the England captain acknowledged that criticism is part of the job but insisted not all of it is fair.
"Look, you can call us rubbish, call us whatever you want," Stokes said, as quoted from ESPNcricinfo.
"We didn't have the Test match that we wanted to. We were great in passages of that game... but I think arrogant might be a little bit too far," he noted.
"But that's okay. We'll take the rough with the smooth. I'd rather words like 'rubbish', but 'arrogant', I'm not so sure about that," he added.
He also justified the decision not to send more first-team players for the PM's XI match. Only Jacob Bethell, Josh Tongue and Matthew Potts are featuring at Manuka Oval, while the rest of the Ashes squad has been based in Brisbane since Wednesday.
This left Lions captain Tom Haines facing uncomfortable questions from local journalists during Friday's pre-match press conference, including whether England had shown disrespect to the fixture and, by extension, to Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese.
"I do understand it," said Stokes.
"We have a pink-ball match coming up in Brisbane, and we have an opportunity to play some pink-ball cricket. When you look at it just like that, I don't want to say it makes sense, but I totally understand it (that view)," he added.
"But there's obviously a lot more to it than just that. There's where it is, in Canberra, which is a different state from Brisbane. The conditions are going to be completely different to what we are going to have coming up," he noted.
"You take all the factors into consideration, the pros and cons, whatever it may be. We then discuss that and decide what we think is the best preparation. We have a few more days off than we planned after that Test. We had to go away and ask how we use these next few days wisely in order to be prepared for what it will be like in Brisbane," he said.
"We schedule everything as if the Test match is going to go five days. It didn't go five days, so we had three days planned of training, and that obviously had to change. That's why now we have a longer build-up for this pink-ball game," the England skipper added.
Saturday's training session stretched close to three hours before rain intervened. Thunderstorms have disrupted the week in Brisbane, with more expected in the coming days, conditions that might affect both team's preparations and the Test itself.
Regardless of the weather, Australia head into the next Test as clear favourites. They have won 13 of their 14 day-night Tests, with their only loss coming against West Indies at the Gabba in 2024. Mitchell Starc, fresh from a 10-wicket haul in Perth, remains the biggest threat under lights with 81 pink-ball wickets at an average of 17.08.
With the odds firmly against England, Stokes delivered a rallying message to his players and supporters as he looks to make things right in Brisbane.
"We did some amazing things in that Test match," he said. "The way we bowled in the first innings, and we were [effectively] 100 for 1, and put a score on the board that we felt was definitely defendable. We all know, and have looked back on it, that there were moments in that game where we could have been a lot better to help us gain even more of an advantage.
"The important thing we need to do as a team and individuals is learn from it. We have identified those moments, spoken about them as a group, that's what we need to do. In terms of execution, could we have been better at executing what we want to do, definitely. But again, we have a mindset of playing the game which is looking to put the opposition under pressure, but also absorbing pressure," he noted.
"Sometimes when you go out there and make a decision, it doesn't always pay off, or work the way you want it to. That's the key for the rest of this tour, staying true to the beliefs of how we play our cricket. But also we do now we could have been a lot better in certain ways," he said.
"We know that there'll be a lot of disappointed fans in England after that first defeat. But it's a five-game series, we've got four games to go, we've lost the first one - we're absolutely desperate to come home with that goal from before we even started the series, which is to win the Ashes," he added.
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