Ben Stokes admits the Ashes being ripped away by rain is a “tough pill to swallow” but insists England could not have done more to force a series decider at the Oval.
Australia have retained the Urn after the final day of the Fourth Test at Old Trafford was washed out without a ball being bowled, the draw meaning that the holders’ 2-1 lead is now unassailable with only one game to play.
The threat of poor weekend weather was clear going into the Test, with Stokes confirming his team were ready to accelerate the game in a bid to force a result.
Having won the toss, the England captain ceded first use of a decent pitch to Australia, bowled them out for 317 and then stormed to a healthy first-innings advantage with a mammoth score of 592 brought up at a rate of five-and-a-half runs per-over.
England took four top-order wickets on the third evening to close on victory but with just one session played across the final two days, the home side run out of time, Marnus Labuschagne’s defiant hundred keeping Australia in the contest.
“We did literally everything we possibly could and sometimes ‘Mother Cricket’, the weather doesn’t help us, we can’t change that,” Stokes said.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow, knowing that’s the reason we sit here with a draw. But we’ve done everything we possibly could in the hours of play we managed to get. We were completely and utterly dominant throughout the hours of play we had.
“The first two games we lost we obviously played some brilliant cricket in those games and we played some cricket that we knew we could have been better at. But in this game I can’t actually look back and think we could have been better there because we were pretty much perfect throughout the whole game.”
That such a gripping series has ultimately been decided by two days of abysmal weather has unsurprisingly started debate over whether reserve days should be in place for Tests of this magnitude, or even whether a drawn series - the least Australia will achieve - should be enough for the holders to retain the Urn. Stokes, however, said he had no issue with the game’s parameters as they are.
“In terms of reserve days, I probably wouldn’t be on that side saying there should be,” Stokes said. “Test cricket is five days. I understand there being a reserve day for the World Test Championship final because you obviously want there to be a winner at the end of that but I don’t see there ever being a reserve day for Test matches in a series like this.”
On holders retaining the Urn with a draw, he added: “Look, that’s always been the way it is. It is what it is, we know we can’t get it back, all we can do is draw the series and that is what we’ll be trying to do.”
Australia captain Pat Cummins also admitted his side’s retention following a game in which they were largely outplayed felt like “a bit of a strange one” and immediately set his sights on winning the series outright.
Cummins was part of the side that retained the Ashes with victory at Old Trafford four years ago, only to lose the final Test at the Oval as England escaped with the consolation of a 2-2 draw, and the incentive of becoming the first Australian team to win in England since 2001 remains.
“We’re proud we’ve retained the Ashes but it’s off the back of not our greatest week,” Cummins said. “It’s a similar group to 2019 when we retained and we all came away feeling okay but that we’d just missed out on what we’d come over to achieve. Whatever happened today wouldn’t change how we look at next week because we want to win it outright.
“I don’t think there’s going to be huge celebrations [tonight]. A bit of a pat on the back for retaining the series, because a lot of work has gone into getting to the position where a draw is enough to retain but there’s a Test match starting in three days so that’ll be the full focus.”
