Ashes: Ben Stokes Admits Disappointment On England’s loss against Australia, says ‘We probably needed….’

England skipper Ben Stokes opened up about the 4-1 loss in Ashes, he pointed at the repeated defeats despite the team being in strong positions. The hosts won the first three Tests in Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and now they have won in Sydney as well. This also means that Usman Khawaja has officially retired from international cricket as he played his final Test of his career in Sydney.

Australia was chasing a modest target of 160 and despite England making an impressive fightback in the third innings with Jacob Bethell scoring a dashing century but still the English team could not carry forward the momentum. 

“Australia are an incredible team,” Stokes said at the post-match presentation. “They’ve had outstanding performances with bat and ball. But we also have to be honest with ourselves and admit we did some damage to our own cause. We know we can play better than that, but full credit to Steve [Smith], Pat [Cummins], and the Australian team. They were exceptional across five Tests.”

Josh Tongue was also excellent with his three wickets in just 11 overs he bowled and offered England a fighting chance but the visitors could never stay up with the momentum.

 “We probably needed another 100 runs, and we allowed Australia to get about 100 too many in their first innings. If you look at that wicket on day five, 200 runs would have put us in a great position,” 

“Where we are at the moment is an interesting place for us as a team,” Stokes said. “What we managed to achieve in the first two, two-and-a-half years was very good, and then we wanted to build on that. We wanted to grow as a team, and be even more consistent than we were in that.” Ben Stokes further mentioned in post-match press conference

“If anything, we’ve done the opposite of that. We’ve started losing more. We’ve not won the big series that we want to be winning, and when a trend is happening on a consistent basis in the way that you don’t want it to happen, that’s when you need to go back and look at the drawing board, and make some adjustments that you think are going to get us back on the path of success again.”