In a packed schedule, England have just finished a white-ball series in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Even if they had arranged a string of first-class matches in Australia, their opposition probably would not have been strong, given the ongoing domestic Sheffield Shield competition.<\/p>\n
Criticism of England’s preparation has come from former captains Lord Botham, Michael Vaughan and Graham Gooch.<\/p>\n
Botham said it “borders on arrogance”, Vaughan called it a “huge risk” and Gooch labelled it “glorified practice”.<\/p>\n
“Cricket has changed so much,” said Stokes. “Preparation is nowhere near as simple as it used to be. You could come out on a tour two months before the first game started.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been preparing for this tour not over the last three weeks, but putting a lot of thought and process into this for a few years now. I don’t know what else we’re expected to be able to do.<\/p>\n
“There are quite a few factors that go into why we can’t prepare how the has-beens maybe prepared in the past. It’s all changed. We’re very comfortable with how we prepare because we leave no stone unturned.”<\/p>\n
Stokes, 34, has not played since being ruled out of the final Test against India in the summer.<\/p>\n
He was superb in that series before sustaining the injury, which came after he put himself through a heavy bowling workload. Injuries have prevented Stokes from completing any of England’s past four Test series.<\/p>\n
However, he has been bowling at full pace in training, which he said he has been doing for two months.<\/p>\n
With Australia captain Pat Cummins missing the first Test because of a back injury, the eventual destination of the urn could be influenced by which skipper spends most time on the field, and Stokes said he is in a “good place” to get through the series.<\/p>\n
“That’s all I’ve been doing for last three months; making sure I’m fit and strong,” he said.<\/p>\n
“When the Test series starts, it’s about being sensible through the rest periods, about how much work I do, because I’ve been building up to get here now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a packed schedule, England have just finished a white-ball series in New Zealand. Even if they had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-258417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}