Ben Stokes has promised to be inspired rather than haunted by his memories of World Cup finals when England launch their latest bid for glory against Afghanistan in Perth on Saturday. Having missed last year’s T20 World Cup, Stokes’s previous appearance in the competition was in the 2016 final, when Carlos Brathwaite hit four successive sixes off his bowling to win it for West Indies. Since that infamous implosion he played a key role in England winning the 50-over World Cup at Lord’s in 2019.
“It was such a long time ago,” he said of 2016. “You learn from stuff like that and use it as motivation to get better and drive you. As I’ve always said, I never let that kind of stuff eat me up. The more you are in those [key matches] and the more you come out on top of them, obviously I think that does give you a slight upper hand maybe on some of the teams that haven’t. I don’t think winning one gives you any favours, I think you’re just used to those high-pressure situations.”
