England all-rounder Ben Stokes had an eventful Ashes 2019 against Australia and though the series was drawn 2-2, if not for him, Australia might have pocketed the series 3-1. His amazing century in the Headingley Test match proved to be the catalyst for the home team’s resurgence in the series.
England was set a target of 359 runs to win and were 286/9 when Jack Leach joined Stokes, as the all-rounder tore into Australian bowlers and took the home side to a 1-wicket victory in the 3rd Test. Talking about his motivation during that match in his new book titled ‘On Fire’, Stokes revealed that Warner kept sledging him.
“I had extra personal motivation due to some things that were said to me out on the field on the evening of day three when I was trying to get through to stumps. A few of the Aussies were being quite chirpy, but in particular, David Warner seemed to have his heart set on disrupting me. He just wouldn’t shut up for most of my time out there. I could accept it from just about any other opponent. Truly. Not from him, though,” Stokes revealed in an extract published in Daily Mirror.
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“The changed man he was adamant he’d become, the one that hardly said boo to a goose and even went as far as claiming he had been re-nicknamed ‘Humble’ by his Australia teammates, had disappeared. Maybe his lack of form in his new guise had persuaded him that he needed to get the bull back?” he added.
Stokes felt that since Warner had not got runs in the series, he was trying to shed his good-guy image. “Although he’d enjoyed a prolific World Cup campaign, he had struggled with the bat at the start of the Ashes and was perhaps turning to his old ways to try to get the best out of himself. The nice-guy act had done nothing for his runs column. I muttered ‘Bloody Warner’ a few times as I was getting changed. The more time passed, the more it spurred me on. All kinds of ideas of what I might say to him at the end of the game went through my head. In the end, I vowed to do nothing other than shake his hand and say ‘Well done’ if I could manufacture the situation,” Stokes said.
“You always shake the hands of every member of the opposing team at the end of a match. But this one would give me the greatest sense of satisfaction,” he added.
(Daily Mirror inputs)
