{"id":308862,"date":"2025-11-26T01:09:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T01:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/308862\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T01:09:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T01:09:12","slug":"stokes-current-squad-warring-with-veterans-over-playtime-and-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/308862\/","title":{"rendered":"Stokes, current squad warring with veterans over playtime and form"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eager to talk up the importance of the Ashes tour for the legacy of his side, Stokes had mentioned the prospect of joining Douglas Jardine and Ray Illingworth as the only three England captains to regain the urn in Australia.<\/p>\n

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But he took the disconnect with the past to another level when he pointedly referred to the criticism of \u201chas-beens\u201d<\/a> in a pre-series briefing with the touring pack of English journalists. Botham spoke for many of his ex-teammates when he uttered the words \u201cprove me wrong, Ben\u201d before the Test started.<\/p>\n

Mark Wood, the fast bowler who took up an invitation to speak to his recent teammate Stuart Broad on the latter\u2019s podcast, gave an insight into the players\u2019 attitude in the aftermath of Perth.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIf I say we\u2019re quite level, people aren\u2019t going to be happy with that. If I say it\u2019s really emotional then people will say: \u2018Why can\u2019t you be level and go on to the next game?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Another fault line opened up a day or two later, when all 11 members of the team that lost in Perth declined to take up a chance to play in the Prime Minister\u2019s XI game in Canberra this weekend<\/a>. Instead, they will fly to Brisbane on Wednesday for more golf and relaxation, before training resumes.<\/p>\n

Vaughan, who as a Fox Cricket commentator has seen more cricket in Australia over the past eight years than most of his countrymen, was unimpressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat staggers me. I\u2019m sorry, but it\u2019s amateurish,\u201d Vaughan wrote for the London Telegraph. \u201cThey are an international cricket team. They are cricketers. I can\u2019t get my head around why they all wouldn\u2019t want to just play.\u201d<\/p>\n

It had been Vaughan, incidentally, who observed in the weeks before the Ashes that Australia\u2019s Test team still had a problem connecting with past players and the public<\/a>. \u201cIf England can get that first win in Perth, you can create a few divides within the Australian community.\u201d<\/p>\n

An hour or so after the Test finished, Langer was seen leaving Optus Stadium with the ECB chief executive, Richard Gould.<\/p>\n

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There is no suggestion this was anything more than a friendly catch-up: Langer was the senior pro at Somerset for several years in the early 2000s when Gould ran the club.<\/p>\n

Gould had watched the violent turn of the match alongside Cricket Australia\u2019s chief executive Todd Greenberg. Both winced at the fact the game was over within two days, costing some $4 million in projected gate profit, but Gould\u2019s was definitely the bigger headache.<\/p>\n

His conversation with Langer must have traversed some pretty candid ground. That afternoon, Langer had carved into England as a Seven commentator, attacking the Bazballers for failing to pay any heed to basic ground rules about batting in the west.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care what anyone says, \u2018oh you play like this, you play like that\u2019,\u201d Langer fumed. \u201cIf you do your preparation to come to Perth, one, you\u2019ve got to take some time to get in, usually 25-30 balls to get in. Be patient, watch the ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecond thing is, driving on the up here in Perth, this has been going on for decades, not just for this Test series. Very, very poor batting by England.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As Langer well knows, the circumstances around his 2022 exit as coach caused fractures that have taken a long time to heal.<\/p>\n

Captain Pat Cummins, in stating why he shared the players\u2019 views that a new coach was needed, had been moved to say these words: \u201cTo all past players, I want to say this: just as you have always stuck up for your mates, I\u2019m sticking up for mine\u201d. While Cummins has always been good at taking such things in his stride, an underlying sense of mistrust between generations has lingered.<\/p>\n

Yet after Perth, Australia find themselves in the unfamiliar position of being the team that more past players, on both sides, respect. For Stokes, McCullum and England, the stress reaction to their opening defeat is at risk of becoming a proper fracture \u2013 unless they show a capacity to listen and learn in Brisbane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eager to talk up the importance of the Ashes tour for the legacy of his side, Stokes had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-308862","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-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308862","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=308862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}