Facing an unlikely target of 373 with a day-and-a-bit to chase it, England\u2019s top order approached the difficult task of test cricket survival with a mindset seemingly locked in a T20 scramble, or distracted by the need to wrap things up so they could get to happy hour at The White Horse pub in Parson\u2019s Green.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t have to be this way. Against a Black Caps bowling outfit that was without its two frontline bowlers, Matt Henry and Kyle Jamieson<\/a>, and further weakened by injury during the match, England could have chosen to build a platform. Instead, they indulged the Stokes circus.<\/p>\n A win might have seemed unlikely, but a serious cricket team \u2013 one with serious Ashes ambitions \u2013 would at least attempt it.<\/p>\n The perfect contrast to Stokes\u2019 odd behaviour (and that of the batters who followed him) was offered by New Zealand\u2019s Daryl Mitchell. The Kiwi came to the crease in the third innings with his side three down for 51; by the time he had scored his century and the innings closed, 237 runs had been added, largely through Mitchell\u2019s doggedness.<\/p>\n Between lunch and tea, Mitchell scored just 16 runs, and wore many other deliveries on his bruised body.<\/p>\n Where Mitchell brought calm, Stokes brought chaos<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Ashes is everything to English cricket. Every series against a side who are not Australia is viewed through the prism of \u201cAshes preparation\u201d (or, more likely, \u201cAshes recovery\u201d). Events at Trent Bridge in the past 24 hours have done no help to England\u2019s chances of winning next year\u2019s series at home. They\u2019ll miss their great allrounder for sure, and they\u2019ll waste energy tidying up the detritus and making sense of the mess from his farewell.<\/p>\n There will likely be mitigating circumstances bubbling away behind the scenes of Stokes\u2019 announcement. The autobiographies of former cricketers \u2013 more than retired athletes from any other sporting code \u2013 are legendary for score-settling and firing late shots. When the events from within the England camp<\/a> over the past month make their way into print, there should be some juicy reading.<\/p>\n Regardless, Stokes\u2019 unseemly rush to a final limelight, and the chaos in which it leaves his team, does him no credit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Regular opener Emilio Gay was trotting off the field, towards the dressing room to put his pads on,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9092,250081,15361,22404,7022,49395,9420,42574,13381,2046,18920,2223,5506,1634,1345,5511,145224,111,139,69,31472,8205,294,1963,41142,213,71294,7187,765,1529,4518,5977,6728,80],"class_list":["post-500739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-against","tag-aldworth","tag-ben","tag-bizarre","tag-black","tag-boosts","tag-brilliant","tag-caps","tag-captain","tag-career","tag-cast","tag-confirmed","tag-defeat","tag-england","tag-home","tag-just","tag-manner","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-path","tag-rare","tag-retirement","tag-series","tag-shade","tag-sports","tag-stokes","tag-team","tag-test","tag-three","tag-weeks","tag-which","tag-winston","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Ben Stokes (left) and Daryl Mitchell. Photos \/ Getty Images, Photosport<\/p>\n