Stokes refuses to give up hope as Ashes ambitions hang by thread

BRISBANE: Ben Stokes refuses to give up hope of winning the Ashes despite going 2-0 down in the five-match series after another heavy loss to Australia at the Gabba on Sunday.

England went into the series with many at home believing they had a real chance of regaining the Ashes.

But after a two-day loss in Perth and Sunday’s eight-wicket defeat in Brisbane, those aims already look doomed.

“The worst thing to do now is to not have hope and not realise that we’ve still got the opportunity to do what we came out here to do,” Stokes said.

“I haven’t lost hope, the dressing room hasn’t lost hope and I’ll be doing everything I can as a captain to make sure that everyone is as positive as they possibly can be.”

Stokes and all-rounder Will Jacks gave England some joy on Sunday as they batted for three hours, defying the Australian attack with “old fashioned” Test cricket.

Australia crush England by eight wickets to take 2-0 Ashes lead

They avoided extravagant stroke-making in favour of leaving good balls and scoring runs through singles rather than boundaries.

Their approach was the polar opposite to how England had batted previously, when their “Bazball” attacking method resulted in soft dismissals on the bouncy Australian pitches.

Stokes made 50 and Jacks 41, the pair ensuring that Australia at least had to bat again.

“All I wanted to focus on was just fight, just show some fight,” he said about the partnership with Jacks.

“And then we’ll see where we are – you know nothing’s guaranteed in life, or nothing is guaranteed in sport.

“But as long as you walk out there and you just think in your head: I’m going to fight all the way to the end here, that’s all I wanted to focus on.

“What you saw from me and Will Jacks out there was just on the back of me saying that everyone’s got a responsibility to just show some fight.”

Stokes conceded that his England team had buckled under the pressure at times during the first two Tests.

“We’ve all been guilty of it so far in this tour at moments where we maybe have let the pressure of the occasion, and the circumstances, get to us in our decision-making,” he said.

“We’ve been that team, we’ve done that to other oppositions before, put them under serious amounts of pressure and they’ve not been able to stand up to what we’ve done.

“At the moment we’ve not been able to stand up to what Australia has thrown up, and that’s as a collective group, not as individuals.

“We are a much better team at applying it than we are absorbing it at the moment.”