Fiery counter from Stokes after England captain faces severe backlash | Cricket

Australia secured a dramatic two-wicket victory in the first Test of the Ashes at Edgbaston on Tuesday. Chasing a target of 281 runs, the Aussies looked to be in trouble as they lost the key of Usman Khawaja, who required another 72 runs to win with just three wickets in hand. But Australian captain Pat Cummins produced a brilliant performance with the bat as he remained unbeaten on 44 off 73 balls and also smashed the wickets, while Alex Carey (20) and Nathan Lyon (16*) supported the famous win. for visitors.

Following England’s defeat, their captain Ben Stokes faced considerable criticism on social media for the decision to declare his first innings on the first day of the Test; the side had declared 393/8, inviting the Australians to bat for nearly 20 minutes of the day’s play. The aggressive declaration did not go down well with many supporters and fans, but Stokes has now defended the decision by stating that England wanted to attack Australia.

I would see (the declaration) as an opportunity to attack Australia. Nobody wants to go out for 20 minutes at the end of the day, Stokes said after the match. Sky Sports.

“To score 390 and then declare sends a message to Australia about how we want to take them on.

If we didn’t announce, would we have had that excitement like at the end? I’m not 100% sure, but I’m not going to look at this game as a what if. We just didn’t manage to get across the border.

Stokes further said that there were many different moments in the game where things could have turned in either side’s favour.

“I mean, look, you play cricket for five days. There’s so many things going on that you could look back on, you know, about 20 individual moments that you could go like, ‘Oh, if that happened, if it went our way, would this game be could have been different?’ But you know, I don’t like to watch things like that.

“We’ve done well against Australia and to dominate most of the time makes it a bit more of a fluke that we’ve lost but there’s still four games to go,” Stokes said.