Mark Wood has rejected Eoin Morgan’s assertion that Ben Stokes’ return will be key to England’s chances of recovering from their dismal start to the Cricket World Cup, the bowler insisting the team’s recovery “is not all just about the Messiah Stokesy coming back and doing everything”.
Morgan made his comments in a column for the ICC reflecting on England’s bruising nine-wicket defeat to New Zealand in their opening game, which Stokes sat out with a hip injury. But Wood, who said he was “a bit battered mentally from watching the ball going over my head a lot of times”, insisted recovery would be down to the entire group of players rather than one individual.
“Obviously we want Stokesy back – he’s a huge player – but he’s not Superman,” Wood said. “I don’t want to put too much pressure on him. Other people have to stand up as well. It’s not all just about the Messiah Stokesy coming back and him doing everything. He’s obviously one of our best players, if not our best player, but all the lads have to stand up as well.”
On Wednesday Jos Buttler described Stokes’s injury as “a slight sort of niggle with his hip”, but the 32-year-old did only gentle gym work while his side trained that evening, sat out the game in Ahmedabad the following day and will not have trained on Friday as the team travelled to Dharamshala, the comparatively bucolic hill town where they play Bangladesh on Tuesday.
Wood said defeat had only added to the side’s motivation as they attempt to retain a title that only Australia – who won the trophy three times in succession between 1999 and 2007 – have defended since West Indies won the first two editions in the 1970s. “It’ll be to prove that we want to keep this trophy. It’ll be to prove people wrong – and there’ll be question marks now,” Wood said. “But as a group we believe in each other, and it’s another chance for us to show how good a side we are.”
England lost three games on their way to winning the 2019 World Cup and recovered from a humbling, rain-affected defeat to Ireland to win the T20 World Cup last year, experiences Wood said they would have to draw on. “I think a great trait of the group is that sort of resilience and bouncing back and calmness,” he said. “I trust every member in there, they’ve been through bad times and good times. We know that we can do it.”
There is unlikely to be any repeat of the expanses of empty seating that aroused such derision in Ahmedabad when England next take to the field. Despite visa issues for fans attempting to travel from Bangladesh the side are well supported, and the picturesque HPCA Stadium in Dharamshala has a capacity of 23,000.
Tickets are sold out and said to be changing hands on the secondary market at 10 times face value. The official attendance at the opening game has been confirmed as 47,518, by a considerable margin the highest of any opening game in World Cup history, but such is the size of the Narendra Modi Stadium still 84,482 away from a sellout.
