England captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum defend their side’s Bazball approach and under siege batsman after Mitchell Starc and Travis Head power Australia to glory

The match turned in a dramatic 18 minutes shortly after lunch when Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Harry Brook and Joe Root all departed, the latter three to extravagant drives.

“We have to let that whole two hours sink in and reflect on it properly, without the emotion attached to what’s just gone on,” Stokes said.

“There’s a lot of disappointment when you walk off having been on the losing side. That’s up to myself, Baz [McCullum] and some of the other senior guys who have a lot of experience in big series like these.

“[We need to] let emotions like this sink in, it has got to hurt. [But] you have to get rid of it as quickly as possibly while learning from it. When we get to Brisbane we need to be back to that mindset we had before this game.

“We are still very confident in our abilities in achieving a goal. We have to not take any baggage from this result into Brisbane because we need to win that one.”

Stokes defended England’s approach with the bat, saying those who prospered in the conditions were the players who attacked the bowling rather than being dictated by it.

“You can label it how you want when you’ve got the outcome,” Stokes said.

“The batsmen who found success were ones who didn’t let go any scoring opportunities that came their way. You still have to find ways of scoring runs on flat wickets, ways of scoring runs on wickets that offer lots for the bowlers.

“The way 19 wickets fell on day one, we were more proactive with our approach, which is how we got a 50-run lead. It would have been nice to have a bigger lead going into the final innings, but we were very confident we could win the game but that wasn’t the case.”

McCullum hinted England would not deviate from their attacking plans.

“The way Travis [Head] played was outstanding and one of the best innings under pressure I have seen,” McCullum said. “He put us under pressure and fair play. That knock was special, and it was a brave call to put him up the order. He was superb. We will try and insulate against reacting too much.”

The effect of England’s reckless batting was compounded by the lack of rest it afforded their speed demons, who, weary from having to bowl on consecutive days, lost their pace and became fodder for Head.

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England’s bowlers averaged 141km/h on the first day, but Jofra Archer was down to the high 130s, backing up after little red-ball cricket since he stormed into the Test arena in 2019.

“I think that can be a natural thing to happen,” Stokes said of England’s drop in pace. “The day-one expenditure of an Ashes series, I think it takes a lot out of you – more than what people could probably understand. We threw quite a lot of energy and effort into that bowling performance yesterday.

“Bat for longer is a pretty easy thing to say, a lot harder to do. Every bowler would love a bit more rest, but yeah.”

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