Ben Stokes blamed for England’s Ashes woes as followers take intention at ‘unfair’ resolution

Stokes tried to rally the troops forward of their make-or-break conflict at Headingley by insisting they had been in a “perfect” state of affairs, however the 32-year-old did admit the workforce knew the place that they had been missing of their first two encounters within the Ashes collection.

“I don’t know if we want to say it but the Ashes is obviously over if things don’t go well,” Stokes told reporters. “We understand where we’re at in the series and we know what we need to do and it may sound daft but we find ourselves in actually the perfect situation.

“For what we have been speaking about as a group in the dressing room about what we want to do and how we want to go about it. And this is that moment, it starts here at Headingley and we’ve got to win this game.”

But having began out at 142/7 and trailing Australia by 121 runs after the primary session, Stokes and England have all of it to do to avoid wasting their blushes.