Ben Stokes has laid it on the line for his team and told them to grab their ‘massive opportunity’ or face Ashes disaster.
There is no middle ground for England anymore, they either win at Headingley or kiss the Ashes goodbye and Stokes reckons this do or die situation is the perfect one for the way his team want to go about things.
“I don't know if we want to say it but the Ashes is obviously over if things don't go well,” admitted Stokes.
“We understand where we're at in the series and we know what we need to do and it may sound daft but we find ourselves in actually the perfect situation.
“For what we have been speaking about as a group in the dressing room about what we want to do and how we want to go about it.
“And this is that moment, it starts here at Headingley and we've got to win this game.
“We've got to keep looking to press the game on. We've got to keep looking at every situation to try and influence the game back in our favour and put Australia under more pressure whenever we feel like we can.
“We know we need to win this game to keep the Ashes alive, and some people might see that as pressure whereas I think myself and the rest of the team see it as a massive opportunity.”
With all the furore continuing around the Jonny Bairstow dismissal including mock ups of Stokes as a baby on the back pages of the Australian papers, the England skipper is now ready for his side to take whatever motivation they need and move on from it.
“I don't think we can galvanise as a group any more than we are to be honest,” he added. “I think there's been a lot of noise around the incident but from me as a captain I think the best thing that everyone needs to do is just move on from it.”
