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captain of england ben stokes Declared himself stunned by Travis Head’s incredible innings of 123 as Australia looked in trouble, Made a strong comeback to defeat England by eight wickets in the inauguration ash Examination
As expected, he refused to criticize his own team’s batting approach after their second consecutive collapse due to a series of loose, early shots by the team’s elite operators.
England were in a strong position with a lead of 105 runs with the fall of one wicket shortly after lunch, but had lost nine wickets for 99 runs and needed late runs from bowlers Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse to achieve this, leaving Australia a target of 205 runs.
After this, stand-in opener Head scored the second fastest century in Ashes history on the score of 123 runs and Marnus Labuschagne remained unbeaten on 51 runs. Australia achieved the target in 28.2 overs,
“A little surprised there,” Stokes said. “That innings from Travis Head was brilliant. It’s very raw, very fresh at this point. But oh my God, that was some brilliant innings.”
Although Head’s performance was incredible, England’s batting collapsed after lunch – For the second consecutive day – much of the postmortem will focus on this.
Many observers had questioned England’s preparation – with just one international match against the England Lions on a much slower pitch than Perth – and their top order looked unexpectedly awkward dealing with fast, good length balls on Saturday.
after Opener Jack Crawley scored his second zero in two daysOllie Pope, Joe Root and Harry Brook all fell victim to expansive drives, the latter two barely putting bat to ball, as did half the team on Friday.
Australia’s bowling was accurate and disciplined but the ball was not moving quickly and England’s slight lack of patience was exposed time and again.
However, Stokes, who at least tried to play a few defensive shots before falling for two, was in no mood to criticize.
“It’s quite clear that the people who managed to have success there were really brave ones, who really decided to pursue the sport because there was so much going on,” he said.
“If you are the guy who has managed to come in, try and give yourself the best chance to get through. But as we saw, whoever tried to occupy the crease didn’t have much success.
“You have to find ways of scoring runs on wickets that are very helpful to the bowlers. The way 19 wickets fell on the first day – we were more proactive with our approach and we managed to get a lead of 50 runs.
“It would have been nice to get a big lead but we were confident in our ability to keep Australia below 200. But that didn’t happen.”
reuters