England were beaten by five wickets at the SCG to lose the series 4-1, having lost the Ashes inside 11 days following defeats in Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide. They occasionally competed with Australia and won a two-day shoot-out in Melbourne, but Stokes said they had played “too much 3/10 cricket” to win the series and conceded that their approach did not work.
“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 [of his tenure] 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.
“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.”
The first two years of Stokes’ tenure were characterised by attacking cricket – often described as ‘Bazball’, though not by the team themselves – with England’s batters liberated to play at an unusually high tempo. But the approach that once caught teams cold has become increasingly predictable, and Stokes conceded that they would have to change.
“We are now playing against teams who have answers to the style of cricket that we have been playing over quite a long period of time now,” he said. “In the first couple of years, teams found it difficult to try to come up with anything to combat the way that we played, but now teams are coming up with plans that are actually standing up to a certain style of cricket that we want to play.
“You’ve seen in moments throughout the series that when we’ve been positive and we have taken a few risks, it has paid off in our favour. But there’s moments in games throughout the series – and even before that – where we’ve almost gifted the flow of the game back to the opposition by a decision that we think is the right one to take out there.
“And when you come up against a team like Australia who know how to play cricket out here like the backs of their hand and you’re also adding to your own downfall then you’re going to end up losing the series 4-1 like we have done.
“We’ve just not been able to be anywhere [near] or deliver the quality of cricket that’s required to win Test matches, in particular out here in Australia. That’s with bat, ball and in the field. It’s just been so far below the level that this team can operate at, and it’s been quite consistent throughout every Test match.
“We’ve had periods where we’ve wrestled some momentum back, but then we’ve just let it all go again. We’ve had moments where we’ve dropped a lot of catches out here in this tour, which have been very, very costly to the overall situation of the game at the end… It’s just been down to the lack of execution when it’s been required.”
Stokes has not played any cricket outside of Tests since August 2024 and will spend the coming months recovering from the groin strain he sustained on the fourth morning of England’s defeat in Sydney. But he hinted at changes in approach and personnel and warned players who failed to perform in Australia that he has a “ruthless” streak.
“How we develop is [to] be pretty honest and straightforward,” Stokes told TNT Sports. “You don’t progress unless you have some pretty honest and truthful conversations. I remember I’ve been young and I’ve had some stuff thrown at me that I didn’t like, but I can always look back and go, ‘I know that was told to me for the right reasons.’
“We don’t have a Test series until June… That’s where it’s up to me, up to Brendon [McCullum] and Rob [Key] and the guys who sit above the players to put together something that we can just go, ‘Right, this is what we expect.’ If people aren’t willing or wanting to meet those expectations, then I have a ruthless side to me.”
Matt Roller is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98
