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SELECT 👉 Bay Oval feed
'Constant execution': How Australia destroyed Bazball
Ethan Clark • December 21st, 2025 6:32 pm
England captain Ben Stokes has reflected on another failed tour of Australia after his Ashes dream was lost today in Adelaide.
Coming into the series with bravado and confidence higher than any English side in recent memory, Stokes and his coach Brendon McCullum have fumbled the urn in just 11 days of play.
Speaking to Fox Cricket, Stokes lamented yet another losing trip to Australia for his English side while looking at what they can still salvage in the final two games.
“That dream that we came here with is now over, which is obviously incredibly disappointing. Everyone's obviously hurting and quite emotional about it. We’ve got two more games to go, and that's where the focus needs to switch to… we ain't going to stop,” he said.
“But look all the stuff from last week, around the stuff that I wanted to see a bit more from the team. I can definitely say I have seen that this week. Some of the guys lower down the order, I thought, stuck in and showed that courage and fight and responsibility that I was asking for. Yes, we've been on the wrong side of the result, but I think we can take a lot from this game into the remaining two games, I think we've learned a lot about ourselves as a team as well.
“We've not been consistent or relentless enough, even though that’s a word I don't quite like to use. But yeah, our execution just hasn't been anywhere near good enough to be able to come to Australia here and compete with these guys. And I think at the moment, the score line reflects that. But yeah, we got two more games. We've got so much to play for.
We aren't going to just fall over and let this series play out. We're going to leave absolutely everything out there in the field that we do. We've got people coming over here to come and watch these last two games. We've got so much more to play for. We're going to get absolutely everything for these last two games.”
When asked where he felt the series has been lost, Stokes made it clear that Australia’s ability to hit their marks regularly proved decisive.
“I think just the constant execution. I think Australia’s just been able to execute things on a much more consistent basis than us, both with the ball, with the bat, and in the field. They’ve been able to outdo us on a much higher level,” Stokes explained.
“We showed it in passages… we did incredibly well to take it to where we did in this fourth innings. I thought we're about to get another heist this morning when Jamie (Smith) and Will (Jacks) were playing so well. But look, yeah, it's, you know, we can't do what we came here to do.
“Looking back on this game, losing the toss and going into bowling, keeping Australia to an under par score, which we thought, and then not being able to respond in the way that we wanted to with the bat when we knew that we had a great opportunity to be able to go and put a big score on the board, and then to fight back the way that we did with the ball yesterday morning, to take six for 60 or something like that. We were confident that we had a very, very good chance being able to chase that down because we knew how good of a wicket it was.”
England’s chances may be bolstered for the Boxing Day Test, however, as the Aussies look likely to go in without Nathan Lyon and with a question mark still hanging over captain Pat Cummins’ health after his unconvincing comments post-match.
“We’ll see how I pull up over the next day or two and then we’ll make a decision,” Cummins sheepishly said.
Either way, Stokes and McCullum will rue another failure for Bazball and should look to make some changes to redefine the flawed foundation of their game.
