England’s players have been told they need to be brave enough to hit back hard at South Africa’s dominant bowlers.
Man of the match Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje were the stand out performers as England were hammered by an innings and 12 runs at Lord’s. But the message from both coach and captain is that they will have to shake off the defeat as quickly as possible and focus on how they will be able to strike back.
“The conditions didn’t allow us to play with that same freedom but that’s cricket, you’ve got to adapt and try to absorb some of that pressure,” said coach Brendon McCullum.
“When you get the opportunity to turn that pressure back on the opposition, that’s when you've got to be brave enough.
“Both Stokesy and I are firm about how we want this team to play and the direction we think we can take it. As we said at the outset, you have to buckle up for the ride.
“The four Tests that we won recently, we were behind the game in each of them and were able to get ourselves back in front and put the opposition under pressure which allowed us to go on and win. In this game, we weren’t quite able to do that and we went on to lose.”
Stokes was just as calm and level following the defeat that he insisted was nothing more than three bad days at the office.
“It’s always disappointing to lose a game,” said Stokes. “We just didn’t play to the capabilities we know we’re capable of producing.
“You’ve just got to give credit to South Africa for the way they came out and played. They outplayed us over the three days, which is fine – we’ve lost a game of cricket.
“It’s not something I’m going to be throwing our toys out of the pram over. There are no excuses, we were out-performed.”
