Call England what you want but we’re not arrogant

Ben Stokes has rejected allegations that his England team are arrogant after their two-day Ashes humbling in Perth, which he admits has seen them go “back to the drawing board” before Thursday’s second Test.

England emerged from a week of hibernation for a first pink-ball training session at Allan Border Field on Saturday in humid, and eventually rainy, Brisbane.

The long gap between matches – which is almost unprecedented in the condensed modern touring schedule – has left Stokes with plenty of time to ponder the two-day, eight-wicket defeat at Perth.

Mitchell Johnson, the former Australian fast bowler, has led the chorus of local media labelling England “arrogant” for their approach and attitude, a charge Stokes rejects.

“You can call us rubbish, call us whatever you want,” said Stokes. “We didn’t have the Test match that we wanted to. We were great in passages of that game… I think arrogant might be a little bit too far, but that’s OK. We’ll take the rough with the smooth.

“I’d rather words like ‘rubbish’, but ‘arrogant’? I’m not so sure about that.”

Some of the criticism towards England followed the decision not to send any of those who played in Perth to Canberra for a day/night tour match against the Prime Minister’s XI, with the second-string Lions and three squad players going instead.

Stokes said he “understands” that criticism but explained England’s rationale.

“We have talked about it and moved on,” he said of the defeat in Perth.

“I do understand it [the criticism]. 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].

“But there’s obviously a lot more to it than just that. There’s where it is, in Canberra, which is a different state from Brisbane, the conditions are going to be completely different to what we are going to have coming up. You take all the factors into consideration, the pros and cons, whatever it may be. We then discuss that, and decide what we think is the best preparation.

‘We’re absolutely desperate’

He admitted that England have had “a few more days off than we planned” but insisted England considered “how we use these next few days wisely”.

“Reflection, time for that, planning all our training leading into this Brisbane Test,” he said.

“We schedule everything as if the Test match is going to go five days. It didn’t go five days, so we had three days planned of training, and that obviously had to change. That’s why now we have a longer buildup for this pink-ball game.

“We finished a game in less than two days. We thought, ‘Let’s go back to the drawing board’ and ‘What are we going to do in the next eight days to prepare us for this game?’ We’ve got training here at the AB Field and then four days of good training, two days of which are under lights.

“Plans did change because the game lasted two days. We’ve thought about what we had to do before we got here to Brisbane. We know we are doing everything we can to make sure we are best prepared for this game.”

Stokes urged the many thousands of travelling England fans to stick with the team.

“It’s a results-based job that we’re in,” said Stokes. “We love our fans and we know we’ve got an incredible fan base who come out here and support us. They want to see us win, we want to win, we’re absolutely desperate. They’re absolutely desperate. We’re all on the same wavelength.

“We know that there’ll be a lot of disappointed fans in England after that first defeat. But it’s a five-game series, we’ve got four games to go, we’ve lost the first one – we’re absolutely desperate to come home with that goal from before we even started the series, which is to win the Ashes, and are doing absolutely everything within our powers, and using our time best to allow us to go out there and try and achieve that goal.”

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