Ben Stokes has warned his players not to wallow in the pain of losing to Australia inside two days as a hotly anticipated Ashes series got off to a catastrophic start in Perth, saying they must “feel it and get rid of it” if they are to have a chance of levelling the scores in Brisbane next week.
The England captain said the team were “very confident in our ability to keep Australia to under 200 and win the game”, having set the home side a target of 205. Instead they were marmalised by Travis Head, bumped up to open in place of the injured Usman Khawaja, who scored 123 off 83 balls to power his side to the brink of victory – a contribution the Australia captain, Steve Smith, described as “one of the great Ashes knocks”.
“I’m still in a little bit of a wow phase after what he has just done to us. I’m shellshocked a little bit,” Stokes said. “It was so hard to be able to continue with plans we tried to implement, because he had an answer to everything.
“We’ve got to let those two hours sink in and reflect on it properly, without the emotion that’s attached to what’s just gone on out there. Obviously there’s disappointment. You’ve got to let emotions like this sink in and it has got to hurt, but you’ve got to get rid of them as quickly as you possibly can while also learning from them. When we get to Brisbane we need to be back in that mindset we [had] before this game. We’ve got to not take any baggage from this result to Brisbane, because we need to win that one.
“It’s the two sides of sport, winning and losing. The emotions are completely different. There’s the highs of winning, and you’ve got to let that go and then move on to the next one, just as you do when you have these emotions. You’ve got to feel it all and then get rid of it.”
Brendon McCullum, the England coach, promised that there would be no change to his team’s approach when the action moves to Queensland. “There were opportunities there, opportunities to score, to put their bowlers under pressure. We just have to do it more often and for longer,” he said. “What we won’t be changing is our blueprint. We believe in what we’re doing, the style that has been set over the past couple of years, and the players we’ve got.”
Head admitted that he had come into the match with concerns about his ability to thrive in Tests, four months after his last attempt. “I trained all four days, which is unheard of, just to find a bit of rhythm and get into things,” he said. “I was worried about, am I capable of doing it still? We’ve had such a big layoff off Test cricket, your mind takes you to: ‘OK, I’m facing probably one of the better attacks I’ve ever faced. High quality, high pace, high speed. Am I still cut out for this?’ Losing the toss wasn’t ideal because you take your mind to last year, batting on that on day four or five was extremely difficult against high-quality fast bowling. So I was worried about that. It’s worked out all right, because we finished on day two.”
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It was the fourth time Head had opened for Australia in Tests, with his best previous result 32 against India in Ahmedabad in 2023, but the first time he had done so at home. He said the possibility had been “brewing” for some time before Khawaja’s back injury – “He’s not moving particularly well in there, the old fella,” Steve Smith said – created an opening, and that he was keen to remain in the role.
“It’s been brewing for a bit. I thought it was the right opportunity to do it,” said Head. “I just felt we lined up better that way, I thought the moment was right. I was pretty bullish around the fact that I felt I could do it. Going back a couple of years we went around the circles a little bit. Steve [Smith] sort of had a crack at it. Nath [McSweeney] had a go. Each time I sort of put my name in and said, ‘Why not?’ I do it in other formats. Could there be an opportunity to do what Dave [Warner] had done, going out there and being a bit more aggressive? So I brewed the idea. I’m not going really aggressive at it, but I put my hand up if the team requires it. I’m more than happy to keep the option there and if they don’t do it, it’s fine.”
