With the specialist batter, Ben Stokes sidelined from the side for three consecutive games in the World Cup 2023, the senior batter will be targeting to make it to playing 11 for South Africa Clash.
Ben Stokes targets playing 11 against SA
With the senior batter having been sidelined for the first three matches, he is making progress to make it to the playing 11 for the next match against South Africa.
On this occasion, the coach Matthew Mott said that the team’s medical staff are confident about the players’ recovery before the match against South Africans.
“We’ve obviously been relatively conservative with him, but the medical staff were always confident that South Africa was a game we could target,” Matthew Mott, their head coach, said on Tuesday. “I haven’t had a report on him in the last 24 hours, but before that, he was on target.
“So fingers crossed, he can tick off all the things that need to be ticked off and he comes back into that side. He’s like the spiritual leader of the group in many ways, and he certainly spoke really well after the game the other day, and spoke about that need to really assert ourselves.”
Mott was confident about their players’ skills with bat and ball, but thinks they are short on confidence.
“The boys are trying really hard,” he said on Tuesday, “but the two things that we’re probably missing are the confidence – to puff your chest out, go out there, and really take the game on – and then it’s just our general attitude, our ability to do the little things: bowl in partnerships when we’re bleeding from one end… and then with the bat, just being a little bit braver.
“We pride ourselves on putting the opposition under pressure, and on reflection, we’ve been the reactive team in those two games. We need to turn that around really quickly.”
He recalled the moments where Ben Stokes spoke to his team-mates after their defeat against Ireland in the T20 World Cup last year after which they won four consecutive games to lift the trophy.
He did the same after Matt spoke to the team and spread positivity among the team.
“Stokesy came in on the back of that and just really reinforced what was a great message – particularly someone who was sitting on the bench, and had a bit of a different lens,” Mott recalled. “Like it did in the T20 World Cup, it [losing] backs you into a corner and you have to come out.
“We know when we go into that mode and we’re not as forceful and aggressive, other teams grow from that. That was one of Stokesy’s biggest points: we’re normally the team that dictates terms and gets the other team unsettled, disrupted. And for whatever reason, we haven’t been able to do that. It’s quite clear what we need to do.”
Harry Brook who played in the absence of Stokes was the only player to score 66 runs in Sunday’s run chase. With the inclusion of Stokes, there could be a possibility of replacing the all-rounder.
“That’s going to be a real key question,” Mott said.
“It’s still up for debate. We’ll have some really good, robust conversations over the next 24 hours; try and work out what that best balance is, not just for South Africa, but for the conditions as well. Harry batted extremely well and I think everyone knows his class as a player so it’s a good problem to have. Whatever way we go, we’ll have a strong XI.
England is scheduled to play in the 20th match of the ICC World Cup 2023 against South Africa on October 21 at Wankhede Stadium.
