England captain Ben Stokes dismissed claims his team were “arrogant” following their capitulation in the first Ashes test against Australia in Perth last week as preparations for the second game in the five-match series continued on Saturday.
Stokes’ team will face the Australians in Brisbane from Thursday, having suffered an eight-wicket defeat inside two days in the highly anticipated opener to the series, with the manner of the defeat prompting widespread criticism.
“Call us rubbish, call us whatever you want,” said Stokes. “We didn’t have the test match that we wanted but we were great in passages of that game.
“I think arrogant might be a little bit too far but that’s OK. We’ll take the rough with the smooth. (I’m) OK with words like rubbish but arrogant? Sometimes you’re like, ‘I’m not so sure about that one’.”
England have not won an Ashes series in Australia after losing the first test since the 1950s and will go into the day-night test in Brisbane with Stokes insisting the team will stick to their attacking principles despite the result in Perth.
“We did some amazing things throughout that test match,” said Stokes. “There were moments in that game where we could’ve been a lot better to help us gain even more of an advantage than we did have. And we know that and we understand that.
“Could we have been better executing what we wanted to do? Definitely. But again, we’ve got a mindset of playing the game which is looking to put the opposition under pressure but also trying to absorb that.
“That’s what the key for the rest of the tour is, making sure we stay true to our belief of how we play our cricket, but also we do know that we could have been a lot better in certain areas.”
Stokes and his teammates arrived in Brisbane on Wednesday and the all-rounder is expecting a different challenge in the hot and humid conditions in Queensland for the pink-ball test.
“I feel like it’s going to be much harder physically than the conditions in Perth,” he said. “We’ve got an understanding of what it’s going to be like in Brisbane.
“It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be hard but that’s why it’s called test cricket.”
(Reuters)
