England’s captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum promised they would not “overreact” after falling to their first defeat as a duo – in staggering fashion – against South Africa at Lord’s.
The Proteas outperformed England in every facet of the game to win by an innings and 12 runs in what was effectively six sessions. England managed just 165 and 149 in their two innings, with Ollie Pope’s first innings 73 their only individual score over 40.
All this sat in stark contrast to the four excellent wins England pulled off earlier in the summer against New Zealand and India, but Stokes and McCullum promised there would be no panicking ahead of Thursday’s Second Test at Old Trafford.
“Looking back, we just didn’t play to our capabilities,” said Stokes. “We have 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, but we’ve got two games left in the series, and our goal is to go away and win the series 2-1.
“Whatever style of cricket you’re going to play, if you don’t play anywhere near that, you’re going to lose games of cricket. If you perform to the capabilities, you’re going to give yourselves an opportunity.
“It was an off-game for us, and that’s absolutely fine. It’s not something I’m going to be throwing our toys out of the pram over. The message for me and Baz [McCullum] upstairs will be, did we commit to everything the way we committed to the first four Tests of the summer? If everyone can say, yes, 100%, we just didn’t execute, then things are good. We’ll move on to the next Test match, and go out there and try and win.
“You have to live in the moment and ride the wave, whether that be of success or failure. We’ve got two games left. If we hold on to this for too long, and carry baggage into the next game, we’re already one step behind South Africa. I want us to be a team where we’re one step ahead.”
McCullum echoed his words. “Obviously we’re disappointed, you never like losing Test matches,” he said.
“We have a little bit of work to do, but you don’t go from being a good team to a bad one overnight. We won’t overreact.
“As we said at the outset, you have to buckle up for the ride. We’ll come back stronger.
“Both Stokesy and I are firm about how we want this team to play and the direction we think we can take it, we just have to polish up a few of those areas.”
Stokes refused to blame a lack of preparation after a number of players, with James Anderson and Stuart Broad playing no cricket since their last Test, against India in the first week of July.
“If you start looking at that, I would say you’re just looking at excuses as to why you lost a game of cricket,” he said. “Five weeks away for this group playing different formats for different teams is obviously not ideal, but we’ve all been playing professional cricket for a number of years.
“We know how to play cricket. If you start looking at it that way, we don’t want to create an excuses-based culture. We look at it as South Africa just out-performed us.”
