One of England\u2019s most notorious Ashes villains has revealed Ben Stokes\u2019 reaction to The West Australian\u2019s not-so-warm welcome to Perth, ahead of what is looming as one of the fieriest series ever.<\/p>\n
The West made international headlines, most notably in the UK\u2019s Guardian and BBC coverage, after labelling the polarising skipper \u201cEngland\u2019s Cocky Captain Complainer\u201d on Wednesday\u2019s front page.<\/p>\n
England cricket legend Stuart Broad, who will join Seven\u2019s stacked commentary team for the 2025-26 summer, starting at Optus Stadium on November 21, claimed it has not rattled Stokes \u2014 yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually have seen a message from him with 18 or 20 laughing faces (emojis) under that headline, which it feels like he\u2019s quite relaxed at the minute,\u201d Broad said on For The Love of Cricket podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cStokes is a hardened 34-year-old, been through a lot. So he\u2019ll be very ready and smiling, at the minute.\u201d<\/p>\n
Broad, who arguably copped the harshest Ashes treatment for an Englishmen by the Australian media during the 2013 series in England, said it was part of the fun of playing the old enemy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think ultimately when we talk about the debate of Ashes cricket, this is part of it; The excitement, the front page headlines,\u201d he said, as he poked fun at the headline.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018England\u2019s Cocky Captain Complainer\u2019.. I mean they\u2019re 50 per cent right with that, because he\u2019s England\u2019s captain, tick.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t think he\u2019s cocky and I\u2019m not sure he\u2019s a complainer. But they\u2019re 50 per cent right, so I think that\u2019s pretty good. It\u2019ll do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, former England captain Michael Atherton declared it \u201ca stone cold classic of a headline\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love that it started with New Zealand-born Ben Stokes and all the classic attack lines were in the short little piece, about 200 words. It\u2019s knockabout stuff, every England team and every England captain gets it when you get over there,\u201d Atherton said.<\/p>\n
Broad opened up on his own experiences Down Under, saying that it\u2019s a \u201cgreat strength\u201d for the Australians to have the media behind them for such an emotionally-charged series.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you tour Australia, you\u2019re not playing against 11 cricketers, you\u2019re playing against the whole country,\u201d Broad said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s why anyone who tours Australia will say \u2018woah, it\u2019s such a hard tour\u2019. Not many English cricketers will say it\u2019s their favourite tour… because of everything that comes with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just quite intense. But there\u2019s a brilliance to that, as well. It\u2019s quite special, it\u2019s different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Broad revealed he had seen a psychologist in the lead-up to the return 2013-14 Ashes in Australia, in the wake of being called a \u201ccheat\u201d for not walking after a clear edge was missed by the umpire in the previous series.<\/p>\n
\u201cDarren Lehmann, at the time Australian head coach, had called for Australia to send me home crying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they were always going to buy into it, so I did train for it with a psychologist.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout building a shield around me, listening to things. You can\u2019t hide away from it, so accept it and laughing it off in a sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t get me wrong, the boos at the Gabba, 45,000 people and my name got announced bowling from the pavilion end or whatever, I was like \u2018woah, that\u2019s unbelievable\u2019. And I couldn\u2019t really feel my body going into bowl that first ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut once the first ball was gone, I was fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
English press quickly jumped to the defence of their captain, despite being just as scathing of the Australians in the last Ashes.<\/p>\n
The Sun\u2019s sports writer John Etheridge said: \u201cNothing wrong with a bit of knockabout Pommie-bashing fun in the papers. But it needs to be clever, humorous and based loosely on truth. This is none of these. It\u2019s just puerile.\u201d<\/p>\n
The West Australian doubled down on Thursday, putting Stokes on the front and back pages with the headlines \u201cNo Balls\u201d and \u201cSitting Duck\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEngland captain cuts a lonely figure at first Ashes net session in Perth with most of his arrogant teammates not even bothering to turn up yet,\u201d the sub-headline read.<\/p>\n
Stokes is one of just a handful of players in Australia this week, despite the first Test starting just a fortnight from Friday. The rest of the squad are set to land in Perth on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of England\u2019s most notorious Ashes villains has revealed Ben Stokes\u2019 reaction to The West Australian\u2019s not-so-warm welcome…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,588,85,33383],"class_list":{"0":"post-266373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sport","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-the-ashes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}