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Stokes: England still have so much to play for
Connor Scanlon • December 24th, 2025 6:39 pm
England captain Ben Stokes has opened up on England’s embarrassing 3-0 Ashes series loss to Australia.
Prior to the first Ashes test in Perth, many pundits hailed England’s squad as the best in the last decade, but they failed to live up the hype.
Speaking on SEN Cricket with Bharat Sundaresan, Stokes admitted that he was devasted and gutted after losing the series in Adelaide.
“There's huge mix of emotions,” Stokes told SEN Cricket.
“There's devastation, you're gutted, all those kind of emotions just hit you.
“Obviously at the end of the game I do the press conference, I do the after-match ceremony, and then you do a little bit more media - that takes 45 minutes maybe. So, your emotions sort of start to level out a little bit more and you start to focus on right what's coming up.”
After that initial wave of disappointment, the England captain realised that there was still so much to play for – adamant that England can still draw some positives from entire Test series.
“After I was done with all my media responsibilities at the end of that game, I actually had quite a long walk back from the press conference to the dressing room. I started thinking, ‘That's crap, we’ve lost the series, what more have we got to do here?’” Stokes said.
“We've got two more games of cricket and I'm not just saying that to sound good, but honestly like there's still so much more to play for in in this series.
“We're representing the country, we're representing a lot of people – guys before us, the guys who are going to represent us, the country after us – also the fans who came out here and travelled.
“This tour isn't over for us yet.
“The result that we came here for is, but by no means are we just going to turn around, kick those stumps over and let Australia do what a few pundits have said that they're gonna do to us.
“Hopefully at the end of this game (the Melbourne Test) we can walk off the field with the result under our belt, and then we can hopefully continue that into Sydney as well.”
Stokes also hailed praise on the Australian squad, explaining that they were able to execute their game far better than England did.
“We've got to give Australia a lot of credit,” Stokes stated.
“They have been incredible in their execution of what is required to be here and be successful in Australia, there's no doubt about that.
“But we also are very clear in our heads that we haven't been anywhere near our best with bat or ball.
“We knew coming out to Australia what was required in terms of execution and what was needed out there – we’ve shown it in very small passages of play that we can do this.
“But Australia have been able to out-execute us on a much longer period of time throughout the first three games and the scoreline reflects that.”
With two remaining games for Australia and England still to play, let’s see if Stokes can turn his team’s form around.
