Ben Stokes has promised that England will keep nothing in reserve as another pair of gruelling back-to-back Tests begins on Wednesday, with the home side needing to win both if they are to overturn Australia’s 2-1 lead and take back the Ashes urn. “Everything is on the line,” Stokes said. “There’s no point holding anything back.”
Stokes admitted of the Lord’s and Headingley Tests that “those two games back-to-back took quite a lot out of us”, and having had a week to recuperate they have little choice but to throw themselves into the next fortnight with no thought of the consequences should a series decider be on the line at the Oval in the fifth and final Test.
“A great example was Mark Wood at Headingley,” Stokes said. “There was a little conversation around: ‘Is it too early?’ But then Woody says: ‘What’s the point in waiting to be fit for a game that might not be for anything?’ There’s no point holding anything back in this game when you might get to the last one and it not be for anything. Everyone is going to go out there this week and throw absolutely everything at it.”
When Australia won the second Test at Lord’s to take a 2-0 lead in the series and leave England needing to win all three remaining fixtures Stokes enthused that “the way in which we are playing our cricket couldn’t be more perfect for the situation we find ourselves in”. They responded in ideal style in Leeds the following week and the addition of a rain-strewn forecast for the final three days in Manchester has done nothing to dampen the captain’s enthusiasm for the situation.
“Knowing we need to win this one and that we could have a bit of weather taking some time out of the game probably suits us even more,” Stokes said. “With the weather that’s predicted, it might bring more out of us again, knowing that we might have to push the game on even more than we would normally do.
“The game [at Old Trafford] last year against South Africa – what was that, two-and-a-bit days to win that? We know we can do it if we play pretty much the perfect game.”
Stokes is braced to take “a few different tactical decisions” to force a result in an abbreviated match, a prospect that seemed to cause some excitement in his opposite number, Pat Cummins. “I hope so, it would be fun,” Cummins said. “We’re prepared for anything. We’ve already seen a lot of different things from both teams in this series. I’m sure this one will be another cracker, with some random stuff thrown up.”
The Australia captain has confirmed that David Warner will continue as opener, and Josh Hazlewood will return in place of Scott Boland. Todd Murphy has been left out – which means Australia go into a Test without a frontline spinner for the first time since January 2012 – allowing Mitchell Marsh and Cameron Green to play.
England’s hope is that the importance of the game and the thrilling nature of the three matches played so far should guarantee another raucous atmosphere. “You know, the crowds we get in the north – and I say the north quite bluntly there – are very good. We get a lot of support,” Stokes said.
With the Ashes Tests in 2027 to be played in Nottingham, Birmingham, London and Southampton this will be the last time Australia’s men visit the north of England until Headingley and Old Trafford return to the Ashes schedule in 2031. “I’m a bit devastated. It’s a shame,” Stokes said. “I don’t make those calls, but if I was involved I would have said: ‘Please keep at least one game in the north.’”
Stokes passed much of his week away from this entertaining and engrossing series – “Time to get away, refresh and get your body back in some kind of decent order” – focusing on another. “I spent most of my time on the sofa, watching a TV series called The Offer,” he said. It focuses on the making of The Godfather, which Stokes also watched, for the first time, during his week off. Now – to borrow from the film’s mafia terminology – it is time for hostilities to recommence, and for his team to switch from going to their mattresses, to going to the mattresses.
