Losing a series is one thing. Losing in a way that your team’s weakness gets exposed to the entire world is definitely another. Ben Stokes’ England were on the receiving end of Pakistan’s absurd revolution which brought a surprising series win with it. While Pakistan should be praised for the way they made a comeback from nowhere, the hindsight is shifting the fans and pundits’ focus on the points where England faltered. Ben Stokes, England’s red-ball captain, was not at his best and what is worse is that it was painfully evident. After he joined the team back in the second Test, things started going downhill, though both events are necessarily not co-related.
Brendon McCullum has defended Stokes, reminding that the English all-rounder returned to the team right away after his rehabilitation from a torn hamstring. The English red-ball coach said that the injury affected Stokes’ ability to make decisions on the field, many of which hurt England significantly.
“That injury was quite a significant injury. He had to work incredibly hard to get back. As the driven athlete he is, he’s all in when he does something. He had to put in a lot of graft there, and subconsciously, it can… not cloud things, but maybe you’re not quite as screwed down as you can be in terms of decision-making.” said McCullum.
“That’s natural, as long as you learn from that and make sure next time you’re presented with that situation you’re able to block out the noise and stay crystal clear in the moment. He’s disappointed, but he’s our skipper and we know he’s a tough bugger. He’ll make sure he’ll come back and it’s our job to make sure we wrap our arms around him and help him along the way.”
The series defeat against Pakistan is the second time this year that the Three Lions have lost a Test series in Asia. This and the fact that the team collapsed like a house of cards against spin on rank-turners are being used by many to point out the obvious; England lack the ability to use spin for their advantage both with the ball and bat. The former Kiwi player was quick to confess that the team did fail to capitalize on the chances, but the defeat has brought along ‘deeper thoughts’ about what needs to be done.
“If we’re being honest with ourselves, we’ve had opportunities to put up a better record than that, so it’s disappointing. You don’t get too many opportunities to nail down big series in the subcontinent. We’ve had those chances, and we weren’t quite good enough.”
“I know we don’t come back to the subcontinent for a couple of years, but there’s still times even in other countries when we’re presented with spinning wickets, and we’ve got to make sure our approach is a little bit more screwed down, a little bit better than it is. That will be some of the conversations we have.
“It’s a matter of trying to get that environment to a place where it’s confident, it’s clear and the messaging is very simple. With failure, sometimes it brings about a little bit of deeper thought and that’s something we’ll have to do over the next little while.”
England’s next red-ball assignment is a three-Test series against New Zealand down under. The recent defeats have squashed the team’s chances of making it to the World Test Championship (WTC) final, but McCullum is hopeful to bounce back anyway.
“We’ve also got a very quick turnaround for the New Zealand series, but we have to make sure we’ve learned some lessons from this and be better when we get the chance. That’s the nice thing: we do get an opportunity, and it would be nice to bounce back in New Zealand.”
