Ahead of the Australia-England clash, all-rounder Stokes says, “We have been crap”
England came to India for this World Cup as the second favorite to win it. Over the last month or so, the wheels have come off the campaign in a fashion not many would have envisaged. While they have tried to address the issue, they haven't yet managed to pinpoint the reasons behind their poor showing.
Ben Stokes was blunt with his assessment. He said in the pre-match press conference a day ahead of the clash against Australia that "I think the problem is that we have been crap.”
While they have chopped and changed, dropped players, and gone away from plans, nothing has worked for them. "Every opportunity that we have had in front of us where we feel like we can take control of the game, the opposition has managed to get it back towards them," Stokes further said, "and we've just not been able to put a full game together, or even got close to putting a full game together except against Bangladesh."... because if we knew what had gone wrong, we would have been able to fix it. But unfortunately, we don't. It's just been one of those tournaments where, yeah, it's just been a disaster. And there's no point sugarcoating it because it's probably what you're all going to write anyway, and it's true."