{"id":201727,"date":"2025-12-20T10:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T10:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/201727\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T10:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T10:13:07","slug":"the-ashes-zak-crawley-unaware-of-ben-stokes-weak-men-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/201727\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ashes: Zak Crawley unaware of Ben Stokes&#8217; &#8216;weak men&#8217; comment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Opener Zak Crawley suggested he was not aware of comments made by Ben Stokes when the England captain said his dressing room is &#8220;not a place for weak men&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Stokes made the statement in multiple interviews following England&#8217;s defeat in the second Ashes Test against Australia earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the run-up to the third Test, in which England are set to be beaten to lose the series at the earliest opportunity, Stokes said he had let his message &#8220;drift around&#8221; his players.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve done all the talking over the past two days that I needed to have done,&#8221; said the all-rounder.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But after Crawley made 85 on the fourth day of the third Test in Adelaide, he said: &#8220;I didn&#8217;t see that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I didn&#8217;t see and wasn&#8217;t really looking out for it. We take everything that is said in the media with a pinch of salt.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Stokes made the &#8220;weak men&#8221; comment after England were beaten in Brisbane to go 2-0 down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The England squad subsequently went on holiday to Noosa between the second and third Tests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Before this match in Adelaide, Stokes said his team had held &#8220;raw&#8221; conversations. The captain also asked his players to &#8220;show a bit of dog&#8221; in their battle to remain in the series.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Kent&#8217;s Crawley stated the messaging from Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum had remained consistent with their previous three years in charge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s been very positive, the same as always,&#8221; said Crawley. &#8220;[It&#8217;s] just trying to be optimistic, play our way, with lots of freedom. It felt like we could do something special going into this game.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opener Zak Crawley suggested he was not aware of comments made by Ben Stokes when the England captain&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-201727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}