The second Test of Ashes 2023 will be played at Lord's from June 28.
Stokes had played a huge gamble by declaring the England innings at 393/8 on day one itself giving his team a chance of victory as rain was on the cards for the rest of the days in Birmingham.
Australia replied with 386 runs to which England made 273 in their second innings to set Australia a target of 281 runs to win. England did all they could but in the end, Pat Cummins proved to be the decisive factor as his 44* helped the Kangaroos win by 2 wickets.
After the match, Ben Stokes showed no regret and promised Australia can expect plenty more in the four remaining matches in the series, beginning at Lord’s next week.
“I am very proud. To take it to the end of day five like that… it was a rollercoaster, so up and down. It is another one of the games we will never forget being a part of over the last year. We just want to be a part of some great moments. Hopefully, we have managed to attract the attention,” Stokes was quoted as saying by the ICC.
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“A loss is a loss. We stuck to our guns in terms of how we were going to operate and we are going to keep coming at Australia in the way that we did,” he added.
In a post-match interaction with former England captain Michael Vaughan, Stokes compared the result to the 2005 series.
“Scoring 390 and then being able to declare, sends a message to Australia,” said Stokes before asking Vaughan, “Did you lose the first one in 2005?”
“Yes”, said Vaughan to which Stokes replied, “It is amazing how similar this one was. I didn’t mean that as a dig by the way.”
“I like your style, you are just copying the 05′ series,” said Vaughan at the end.