England cricket team were completely outplayed by Pakistan & lost the Test series by 1-2. Ben Stokes‘ batters looked in all sorts of trouble against the spinners on rank turners. Ben Stokes and his batters’ perhaps should have stepped down the track and played aggressive cricket rather than playing a lot of sweep & reverse sweep shots which backfired.
Once again, ‘Bazball’ has come under the scanner; earlier India won the Test series in February-March 2024 by 4-1 even after losing the first test match. It won’t be wrong to say that England is way too much reliant on Joe Root to score big runs which is not a good sign. The likes of Ollie Pope & Harry Brook need to take responsibility and grind the opposition and convert their starts rather than playing too much aggressive brand of cricket.
Ben Stokes needs to get back to the old Ben Stokes who was a damn good captain- Ian Chappell
Ian Chappell was having an interaction with World Wide Of Sports and pointed out that Ben Stokes’ looks a bit tired. Ian Chappell stated that Ben Stokes should try to win the game from ball one and avoid giving easy singles to the batters. Ian Chappell made it very clear that taking 20 wickets is the hardest thing in Test cricket but a captain needs to take responsibilty.
“I don’t know if Stokes has gotten a bit tired as a captain but he needs to get back to the old Ben Stokes who was a damn good captain and try and win them the game from ball number one. When you see a captain giving easy singles to batsmen, I mean, I watch that and it drives me absolutely crazy,” said Ian Chappell.
“Getting 20 wickets is the hardest thing you’re ever going to do on a Test field… But you’ve got to try and win the game as a captain from ball number one, and that’s what Stokes has been doing. For some reason, he has stopped doing that against Pakistan,” he added.
Problems aplenty for England
With Ben Stokes & Joe Root at the back-end of their career and ECB selection panel ignoring Jonny Bairstow for the red ball cricket; England is about to go in-through a massive transition phase. Ollie Pope’s run in the last year or so hasn’t been promising with only a handful of knocks which is not a good sign. England need to go back to the drawing board and restudy the attacking approach as scoring at 3.5 runs per over in the match is not a bad thing at all.
With James Anderson & Stuart Broad retired, the young pace attack comprising of Brydon Carse, Matthew Potts & Gus Atkinson looks promising but they need to give a long rope if they want to beat India & Australia in 2025-26 Test assignments. Chris Woakes should lead the pace bowling attack who has played a lot of cricket with Anderson & Broad. Brendon McCullum would be tested given there’s a lot of expectations for England and now the coach will have to manage both white ball & red ball assignemnts which will be a massive challenge.