Ben Stokes on India series loss – ‘We’re man enough to say that we’ve been outplayed’

“Now that the series has come to an end – I don’t give too much away, obviously, whilst the series is going on – but since the first Test match of the series, we’re man enough and we’re big enough to say that we’ve been outplayed by the better team in the series,” Stokes said at the post-match presentation. “But we’ve got so much cricket coming up in our summer, and then Pakistan and New Zealand. Taking the positives that we’ve got from the series is something that I’m really looking forward to. I’m excited to be a part of driving this team even further forward.”

Speaking to broadcaster TNT afterwards, Stokes added that the tour result had done nothing to dent England’s Bazball ethos, saying “we ain’t gonna let the last two years go to waste over this series in isolation”, having said during the presentation that he wasn’t troubled by a lack of batting consistency.

“When you look at the game as a whole, and the series as a whole, there’s been really small moments throughout every Test match where we wrestled a bit of momentum back towards us, but we’ve not just been able to maintain and keep that going,” Stokes said. “And in Test-match cricket, especially out here where the game can turn really fast on you, it’s about understanding that and trying to understand those moments and being a bit more relentless with it. How that looks, I’m not sure, but we’re all here at the highest level playing cricket. I think we all know as individuals that that’s probably where it’s gone wrong for us, on more than one occasion.

“When India get on top, especially with the ball, you see a lot of men come around the bat, and when you’ve got the quality bowlers that they do – Ashwin, [Ravindra] Jadeja, Kuldeep – you’ve got to find ways of getting the guys around the bat out of there. Sometimes that comes with risk. Risk doesn’t always pay off, but you get a couple of sweeps away and then you find you’ve only got one man around the bat. You’ve just got to be positive enough to be able to take that risk, and know that sometimes it can be your downfall.

“You can look and say, ‘could I have done something better?’ But when the intent and the application is there, with the real reason as to why you’re playing that shot, then you can’t really say too much else.”

“I’ve been lucky enough to be on the field with some of the lads there, the milestones that Jimmy’s got to, but being there for 700 wickets as a seamer, it is quite phenomenal,” Stokes added.

“I’ve said many a time that he’s someone who every young kid, if he wants to be a fast bowler, should look up to and try and emulate,” he continued. “Everything that he has done from the day he first started being a cricketer, let alone international cricketer, to where he is now … 41 years old, he’s as fit as I’ve ever seen him, and I honestly just don’t know when he’s going to stop, because the desire to commit is still there. It’s great to watch.”