We Have Earned the Favourites Tag With the Brand of Cricket We Played, Says Ben Stokes

England Cricket Team will enter the upcoming ICC World Cup 2019 starting from May 30 as the favourites to win the trophy. They will play the tournament opener on May 30 against South Africa at the Oval. As they look forward to their first World Cup title, Ben Stokes feels they have earned the favourites tag with the brand of cricket they have played over the last few years.

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Have earned the favourites tag: Stokes

Since England’s ouster from the 2015 World Cup, England led by the Eoin Morgan has played a different brand of cricket. They have come out aggressive taking on the opposition and have looked invincible in this format of the game. As a result, they are currently at the top of the ICC ODI Rankings. In the last two years, England have won 34 of their 49 games while three of them produced no result. Moreover, the statistics drastically improves when England plays at home. They have lost only four games out of the 26 matches in since January 2017 which shows their dominance in this format.

Echoing the same words, Ben Stokes feels they have worked immensely to earn this tag of being the favourites. However, they will also be under pressure as they chase the trophy playing in front of their home crowd

“I think we have earned the right to be favourites with the cricket that we have played in the last three or four years. Being world no.1 you will always come into the tournament as favourites. If India or Australia were the no.1 ranked team, they would come into the tournament as favourites,” Stokes said to IANS.

We read situations better now: Stokes

Furthermore, Ben Stokes admitted that they cannot take anything for granted. He also drew instances from Champions Trophy in 2017 where Pakistan used the conditions perfectly to rout England and eventually went on to win the trophy beating India in the final. But Stokes said that they have improved since then and read situations better than before.

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But we cannot take the no.1 tag into the tournament if we want to win it because as you saw during the Champions Trophy (2017) that we were playing great cricket and then we got onto a wicket against Pakistan which wasn’t suited to our style and suited them more. But we have learnt from that and we are more capable to adapt to situations now than we were back then. We are a much better team now because we are able to read situations better,” he concluded.