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Ben Stokes has admitted that the way England have folded in key moments during the first two Ashes Tests has led him to question the character of his players, and insisted: “A dressing room that I am captain of isn’t a place for weak men.”
After Australia won the second Test in Brisbane by the same eight-wicket margin with which they secured the first, Stokes suggested the telling difference was that the home side had been superior in the “moments in the game where the heat is on and the pressure is really, really cooking” whereas his players “have all been guilty at moments [of] letting the pressure, the occasion, the circumstances, get to us”.
“Over and over again, Australia have managed to get through those periods and outdo us,” Stokes said. “I know it’s not a skill thing, because they’re all incredibly talented players. But if you can’t put it down to skill then you start to wonder, what is it? Do we need to start thinking about what mentality we’re taking into those pressure moments?
“Because when we’re on top we’re great, but when the game is neck and neck we’re not coming out on top on enough occasions to be able to challenge Australia. There is a saying that we have said a lot here, that Australia is not for weak men. A dressing room that I am captain of isn’t a place for weak men either.”
Stokes suggested England were receiving a taste of their own medicine at Australia’s hands, and that they had not been able to cope with it. “The mental side of this game is tough,” he said. “Being in the right frame of mind when you’re on top, that’s the easy part. It’s when you’re behind, or when you’re in the pressure moments, that’s the hard part. We’ve been the team who have done that to other oppositions before, where we’ve put them under serious amounts of pressure and they’ve not been able to stand up to what we’ve offered. And at the moment, we’ve not been able to stand up to what Australia have thrown at us.”
Though England have been criticised for their preparations for both Tests, choosing to play a single, brief and not truly competitive warm-up game before the first and no warm-up game at all before the second, the England coach, Brendon McCullum, suggested the players had in fact worked too hard.
“I actually felt like we overprepared to be honest,” McCullum told Channel 7. “We had five intense training days and I think sometimes when you’re in the heat of the battle the most important thing is to feel a little bit fresh. I think the boys just need a few days off and probably need to change up a few of the training methods a little bit. I’m a horse racing man and you wouldn’t just keep doing the same thing with your horse – you’d send it around in figure eights or over the little jumps, just to switch it up a bit. So we’ll look at some alternative methods over the next few days.”
Stokes agreed with McCullum’s analysis. “There’s a great saying: are you going to train to train, or are you going to train to dominate? There’s a lot of training that you see go on where you’re just doing it for the sake of doing it,” he said. “You’re doing it to look right, to be doing the right things, whereas actually you’re not achieving anything out of it. It might look good to the external world [but] wasting energy can be very, very detrimental. I understand that [people would think], surely if you train more you’re going to be better. But there’s that saying, and I like to train to dominate, as does this team.”
Stokes said he still believed England can win the Ashes. “If we lose hope we might as well not turn up,” he said. “I haven’t lost hope, that dressing room hasn’t lost hope, and I’ll be doing everything I can as captain to ensure that everyone is as positive as they possibly can be.”
To that end, the squad next head to the Sunshine Coast beach resort of Noosa for a short break before moving to Adelaide, venue of the third Test, on Saturday – the same day Australia’s team will assemble there after a few days at home.
“It’s been pretty full-on, on the field, off the field. And as physical as this game is, a huge part of it is the mental side,” Stokes said. “I know what the game can do to you when it isn’t feeling right or going well, so trust me when I say it is so important for teams to put the pressure aside for a couple of days. It’s very important that when you do get the opportunity you are able to go away and refresh your mind, because obviously in Adelaide we need to be not only physically very good but mentally very good as well.”
