England captain Ben Stokes trained like a ‘beast’, had high hopes as he aimed to return home as an Ashes-winning skipper. Stokes’ dream was shattered on December 21 as Australia won the third Test at Adelaide Oval by 82 runs to retain the Ashes. As England’s drought of a Test win continued on Australian soil, Stokes admitted that he is disappointed and emotional.
“Obviously, the dream that we came here with is now over, which is obviously incredibly disappointing. Everyone’s hurting and quite emotional about it. We’ve got two more games to go and that’s where the focus needs to switch to now. We came here with a goal in mind and we haven’t been able to achieve that. It hurts and it sucks, but we’re not going to stop,” Stokes said in the post-match presentation.
Stokes admitted that Australia outplayed them in all departments. When Jamie Smith and Will Jacks were batting, he thought England will pull off another historic run chase but it wasn't to be.
“Australia have been able to execute things on a much more consistent basis than us with the ball, with the bat, and in the field. This game of cricket is based on how you bat, how you bowl, and how you field, and they’ve outdone us on a much higher level. We’ve shown it in passages across these first three games, and again this week, we did incredibly well to take it to where we did to in this fourth innings. I thought we were on for another heist this morning when Jamie and Will were playing so well, but we can't do what we came here to do. There’s some good stuff to take out of this game,” the all-rounder said.
Stokes rues losing wickets in clusters, looks at positives from Adelaide
Stokes who scored a gritty half-century in the first innings was knocked over by Nathan Lyon in the run chase. He rues losing three wickets to Lyon late on Day 4’s play.
“There were always going to be challenges that were presented to us and we dealt with them pretty well in passages. Losing those three wickets at back end of the day yesterday set us back a bit. All the stuff from last week around the stuff that I wanted to see a bit more from this team, I can definitely say I’ve seen that this week. Some of the guys lower down the order stuck in and showed that courage, fight, and responsibility that I was asking for. Yes, we’ve been on the wrong side of the result, but we can take a lot from this game into the remaining two games. We’ve learnt a lot about ourselves as a team,” the 34-year-old said.
“We haven’t been consistent or relentless enough, our execution hasn’t been anywhere near good enough to come to Australia and compete with these guys. At the moment, the scoreline reflects that. But we’ve got two more games. We’ve got so much to play for, we’re not going to fall over and just let this series play out. We’re going to leave absolutely everything out there in the field. We’ve got people coming over here to come and watch these last two games, we’ve got so much more to play for. W're going to give absolutely everything for these last two games,” he added.
After a few days' break, England will play at the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).