Ben Stokes spent Saturday morning under baking Brisbane sunshine, watching his bowlers loosen up at Allan Border Field and juggling questions about a week that has been anything but straightforward. The England captain accepts the side were, in his words, “rubbish” in Perth. What he will not wear is the suggestion they swaggered into the opening Test with an air of entitlement.
“Look, you can call us rubbish, call us whatever you want,” Stokes said. “We didn’t have the Test match that we wanted to. We were great in passages of that game… but I think arrogant might be a little bit too far.
“But that’s okay. We’ll take the rough with the smooth. I’d rather words like ‘rubbish’, but ‘arrogant’, I’m not so sure about that.”
The context is familiar. England folded for 9 for 99 on the second afternoon, left Australia needing barely a jog to chase down 76, and were done inside two days. Newspaper columns, radio phone-ins, even the odd breakfast TV panel have seized on everything from shot-selection to the sight of Joe Root working on his putting stroke. Former quick Mitchell Johnson took a particularly sharp line in his Friday column, arguing England had underestimated both opposition and conditions.
Eleven clear days sit between the carnage at Perth and next Thursday’s day-night Test at the Gabba, so the noise was always going to swell. The tourists’ build-up has hardly helped. A low-key three-day run-out against the Lions and a generous sprinkling of rounds of golf hardly screams white-ball intensity, never mind an Ashes campaign expected to test batting techniques and tempers.
Stokes, flanked by Brendon McCullum and a tray of electrolyte drinks, tried to steer the conversation towards simple cricketing reasons. “We weren’t out of the contest until we were,” he noted, pointing to a first-innings lead of 105 and the small matter of nine wickets in hand. England’s implosion, he added, was caused by poor decision-making rather than mindset. “There were a couple of shots each of us would like back,” one senior batter admitted quietly after nets – a remark that feels both obvious and refreshing in its honesty.
A second, related storm concerns the Prime Minister’s XI match in Canberra. Only Jacob Bethell, Josh Tongue and Matthew Potts, none of whom played in Perth, have travelled south. Everyone else stayed here to focus on pink-ball practice. Lions captain Tom Haines, left to front the pre-match press conference, was asked whether the absentees amounted to disrespect, of the fixture and even of Anthony Albanese.
“I do understand it,” said Stokes of the blowback to shunning the fixture. “We have a pink-ball match coming up in Brisbane, and we have an opportunity to play some pink-ball cricket. When you look at it just like that, I don’t want to say it makes sense, but I totally understand it [that view].”
Privately, several members of the back-room staff argue that 40-degree heat in Canberra followed by a cross-country flight would have served no-one. Instead, they have arranged five training days across different times of day, tweaking floodlights to mimic Gabba dusk. Jofra Archer, still on a strict workload, managed a sustained spell at 80 per cent intensity on Friday; the early signs are encouraging, even if no-one is promising a Test return yet.
The batting order, though, remains the focus. Root’s pair of dismissals – tamely steering to gully first time, then missing an in-ducker – dominated the UK comment sections. A team analyst offered a simpler metric: “He faced 29 balls in the match. Give him 90 before calling a trend.” Root himself walked past reporters with a brief “morning, lads”, headphones on, bat under one arm. It felt significant enough that he spent extra time against left-arm throw-downs, trying to replicate Mitchell Starc’s angle.
From the Australian side, there is understandable confidence but little crowing. Head coach Andrew McDonald called England’s collapse “one bad session that went our way”, while Travis Head, whose brisk second-innings 62 sealed the win, shrugged off Johnson’s column. “Different people read different things,” Head said. “We’ll just prep for the next one.”
The sense, then, is of two teams tuning out background theatre and looking at pink balls under Brisbane lights. England have talking points – whether to reinforce the top order, whether Rehan Ahmed’s wrist-spin is worth the gamble – but also a captain determined not to let narrative outrun evidence.
Stokes put it plainly before jogging back to the nets: “We’ve had a tough start, but it’s a five-Test series. If we spend all week worrying about adjectives, we’ll forget the basics. Bat properly, field sharply, bowl with discipline. That’s it, really.”
Whether that pared-back message translates into resilience at the Gabba will define the next fortnight. For now, England have heard the noise, rejected the charge of arrogance, and gone back to work.
