{"id":269018,"date":"2025-11-18T04:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/269018\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T04:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:05:07","slug":"the-ashes-england-will-comfortably-win-series-if-ben-stokes-plays-every-test-says-mark-ramprakash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/269018\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ashes: England will comfortably win series if Ben Stokes plays every Test, says Mark Ramprakash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stokes has been the focus of the hostilities from the Australian media since arriving in Perth, with one local paper describing him as “England’s Cocky Captain Complainer”.<\/p>\n

Stokes and some other England players were also pictured on the golf course on Monday – an apparent attempt to question the side’s preparations.<\/p>\n

Stokes’ county coach, Western Australian Ryan Campbell, criticised the headlines and questioned the logic in targeting Stokes before the series.<\/p>\n

“I got a bit shirty about it,” Durham coach Campbell said. “I want WA to put on a good show. I don’t want that stuff.<\/p>\n

“Everyone wants to say something smart. A lot of it you have to take with a pinch of salt.<\/p>\n

“There is two blokes I wouldn’t have a crack at – that is Ben Stokes and Joe Root. <\/p>\n

“They are the calmest and take it on board to give back in spades. Pick your targets a bit better.”<\/p>\n

Stokes has already produced a number of famous Ashes moments, starting with a century in his second Test against Australia in Perth during the 2013-14 tour.<\/p>\n

The most famous was his extraordinary match-winning century at Headingley<\/a> in 2019 and spinner Jack Leach – his final batting partner that day – said he was inspired by Australia’s aggression during that knock.<\/p>\n

“[David] Warner had been going at him,” Leach said.<\/p>\n

“He said [at the end of day three] ‘I am not walking off that pitch until we have won the game’ and was really fired up. Obviously he ended up doing it.”<\/p>\n

Leach added: “[Root] does it in a quieter way. He is, deep down, pretty motivated for this. <\/p>\n

“There has been a lot of chat about him never scoring a hundred in Australia<\/a> so he is going in with a lot to prove.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stokes has been the focus of the hostilities from the Australian media since arriving in Perth, with one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-269018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269018","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=269018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}