Ben Stokes' post-Brisbane tonal shift was a defining moment in his captaincy tenure, with no time left for coddling players who are now fighting for their careers, writes Phil Walker.
Ben Stokes had had enough. After a second hammering, defeat raining down on his shattered quicks, he made a decision. The media, both mainstream and armchair, would have something to get their teeth into. And Stokes could clear his chest.
“When the game is on the line, teams are able to handle that pressure better than us,” he told the TV cameras, steadily, evenly. “We’re a great team when we’re ahead. And when we need to play catch-up, we’re great. But when the moment of the game is on the line, we’re not able to stand up. For me, as a captain, it’s starting to become quite obvious.”
That last line. That’s the killer.
Stokes never talks about his team like this in public. Brisbane snapped something in him. What he saw there and at Perth, and what he was complicit in, across 420.2 overs of cricket – less than the length of a single Test match – triggered jarring questions: both of himself, and some of the players in his strangely low-key, introverted dressing room.
There is a sense that inside those walls, Stokes’ players hang on him almost too much. That there’s a degree of awe, a kind of beta-deference of a sort that would be laughed out of town in the more outward-facing dressing room of Australia. These are his players, under his banner; the culture has been shaped by him more than any other figure. But at the same time, they are not without agency. This team’s identity, its way of seeing the game, is an imprint, not a decree. There has always been space within it to move around, and crucially to think for oneself.
🗣️"We've got to win these two games. We've been here before, have to sort it out pretty quick."
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Ben Stokes reflects on England’s performance following their second defeat of the series.#AUSvENG #Ashes2025 pic.twitter.com/GplMJ8MwhZ
Ollie Pope, for he is the case study of the week, has played 63 Tests for an average of 35. After Dennis Amiss, Pope has the lowest average of all frontline English batters to have played as many Ashes Tests. After a particularly bleak match at Brisbane, he is playing for his future. Jacob Bethell could play at Adelaide. Will Jacks could move up to three (yep, we’re here already). Even Stokes himself could do it.
Pope has become a lightning rod for this regime’s excesses and failures. There is an idea going around that he would thrive under more straightlaced management. The theory runs that what Pope really wants is to be out in the middle, hoovering up his practice hours and then jumping into the nets. The problem here is that Pope tends to fall away during long series, his scores diminishing the more he plays. Plus, of course, he trains like mad. He’s obsessed, probably too much, with technique. I have heard him spend upwards of 10 minutes justifying taking an off-stump guard. Stance, crease-work, backlift, triggers, all the rest of it. He lives it deeply. He studies it all. And the upshot is a cricketer in regular conflict with himself and his game, his flaws returning to churn him up.
For two hours at Perth his technique held up well. He had good balance, appearing stiller at the point of impact. He left well. There was nothing overtly risky or wild. And then on 46 he fell over again, played round his front pad, and got whacked on the boot. This happens often to Pope. It is not new. The more it happens, the harder it gets to live with.
And thus, at Brisbane, the inner conflicts came bubbling back up. Pope reverted to the twitchy, skittish version of himself – first slashing at Mitchell Starc to chop on for nought and then in the second innings, flailing away under the lights as if asking to be put out of his misery.
The routine now is to blame The Idea for every English mishap, but there are other, more timeless factors at play. In Pope’s case there are demons of the kind that only he can exorcise. Still, for argument’s sake, let’s say that he has swallowed it whole, and gone full dead-eyed Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, incanting to Jamie Smith by the hotel pool how Baz is a “poet warrior in the classic sense”. In which case, more fool him for having arrived at such a superficial interpretation of a quite interesting idea.
Criticise selection. Go in hard on the loyalty question, and its corollary that the longer players are indulged, the more likely they are to run to fat. Point to the closed nature of the squad, with no reserve opener and no back-up keeper. Identify the fact that while having belief in your players is a good thing, clearly it can create blind spots. Despair by all means at the lack of a consistent top-class fast bowling coach in the entourage, and batting coach Marcus Trescothick’s soft-touch approach to technical specificities – an attitude which runs through the whole of English cricket culture, by the way. Scream into a pillow at McCullum’s daft, gaslighty line that they were “over-prepared” for Brisbane. These are all legitimate management issues.
But throwing the cloak of ‘Bazball’ over everything too easily conceals the fact that these cricketers are responsible for the calls they make in the moment. Ultimately, what happened at Perth and Brisbane was not the result of an idea, even if the language of that idea has become overblown, pulling a series of broadly sound theories out of shape. It was about cricketers making bad decisions in the heat of the night.
Stokes, it needs saying, made a few himself. For once, his on-field captaincy has seemed devoid of clarity and energy. It was one thing to lose control at Perth as Travis Head went berserk, but quite another to let Mitchell Starc amble to a match-turning 77 on the third afternoon at Brisbane without having to play a shot. Relatedly, running himself out on the first evening at the Gabba was a lamentable piece of death-wish cricket that will be replayed in the minds of England fans for years to come. His stirring five-for on the first evening at Perth to get England up in the match was a mirage.
In any leader’s tenure, there are defining moments, and Stokes post Brisbane experienced one. It was a necessary tonal shift, away from the fridge-magnet mantras about loving life and self-expression to a more hard-nosed, objective take on the realities of what’s in front of him. It will not make for easy listening for some of his players, but the time for coddling is over. It was probably time long before this, but there we are.
It is also possible that Stokes has realised something – something which could be potentially transformational for a team that he appears determined (thankfully) to take on into next year and the return Ashes in 2027, whatever transpires over the next few weeks. If his England really are so bad at coping with pressure, then perhaps now is the time to recognise it. See it, size it up, and deal with the thing. Pressure doesn’t have to be suffocating. Pressure can focus the mind. It’s the essential lifeblood of Test cricket, always and forever. Some of these cricketers are playing for their careers. At least now they know it.
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