Ben Stokes has promised that England are seeking to become even more positive in their approach to Test cricket after a stunning win at Trent Bridge sealed the series over New Zealand with a game to spare.
Jonny Bairstow’s extraordinary century and an unbeaten 75 from Stokes helped England chase 299 in 50 overs on Tuesday, leaving 22 overs spare.
The series concludes at Headingley next Thursday, after England’s white-ball side play a three-match ODI series in the Netherlands, starting on Friday.
England’s selectors meet tomorrow and are likely to name an unchanged Test squad with Stokes allaying fears over a knee injury that troubled him while batting yesterday. He said the issue was a pain caused by cartilage removed five years ago, which eased after 15 minutes.
“Now we go to Headingley 2-0 up, won the series, but with WTC [World Test Championship] points to play for,” said the captain.
“We're going to be even more positive as I said after Lord's. I don't know how we can be more positive than this week, but we will try.”
Stokes does not want to put a cap on England's attacking intent and ambition.
“With this group of players we have absolutely no idea, the sky's the limit but we could probably go further than that,” he said.
England received mixed news from ICC headquarters this morning. First they learned that they had been fined 40 per cent of their match fee and penalised two points in the World Test Championship for maintaining a slow over-rate. In better news, Joe Root returned to No1 in the official Test batting rankings.
