We always look to take the positive option: Stokes

Australia was all over England when Ben Stokes walked in to the middle at Edgbaston on Saturday. There was rain in the air, the new ball was swinging and had consumed Jason Roy, Alex Hales and Joe Root and Australia’s pacers were calling the shots.

Stokes, too, might have joined the list the very first ball when he was struck on the pads, but the ball had pitched marginally outside leg.

That margin proved to be costly for Australia, for what happened from there on was pure brilliance from the man who is fast becoming the top allrounder in the world. At 35 for 3 when rain interrupted play for 42 minutes, Steven Smith’s men might have felt on top, but that feeling would evaporate in no time as Stokes got going in the company of Eoin Morgan.

Most teams would have tried to build innings in conventional ways after such a start. Not this England side, though. Stokes and Morgan played the way they knew best and did what they do best – attack. Relentlessly at that. The outcome was a 159-run stand that took the game towards England and knocked Australia out of the ICC Champions Trophy 2017. Stokes remained unbeaten on 102 – his third ODI century – while Morgan fell just 13 short.

Didn’t they feel pressure or have any fear of failure at all, even at that stage?

“There was always pressure. But the fear thing – we don't think about too much,” Stokes told ICC after the game. “Me and Morgy (Morgan) both talked about the fact that the ball wasn't swinging and there was just a bit of sideways movement off the deck. So we just had to try and play every ball on its merit and then once you get in on good wickets and face a few balls, it gets a lot easier.

“It just sums up our team at the moment and the way we're moving forward with our positive intent and we always on to be on the front foot.”

The turnaround before and after the rain break was set up by Morgan, who began the second phase of the chase with a couple of boundaries off Starc. Stokes took over in style, smashing Pat Cummins for six fours in his next three overs. And then came the most audacious shot of them all – a flat-batted swat off Starc that went bursting into the deep square-leg stands.

Before Australia realised, England had taken the game away with ten fours and two sixes in nine overs since resumption.

According to Stokes, that was not a counter-attack, but just England’s natural way of going about its work.

“I don't think it was a counter-attack,” he said. “It's just our natural way in the middle order. We always look to take the positive option whether in attack or defence.”

Convention has it that teams should try and chase targets by breaking the innings into smaller sections. Convention also says batsmen target certain bowlers while chasing. For England, none of that mattered as the Stokes-Morgan pair just kept going.

“It was just our natural way,” said Stokes. “We don't make a conscious effort on that (targeting bowlers) unless we feel the need to. We just keep playing, we know that our natural attacking positive instinct is probably going to take over.”

It certainly did, and resulted in a rain of boundaries. The packed crowd and the sense of occasion added to it, and Stokes said he did have to control his adrenaline and restart at some stages.

“When you're out there in chases, the biggest thing that you need to come over is the adrenaline that you feel,” he explained. “I actually had to sort of start again at certain stages. I looked up at the board and saw we needed 100 to win and I thought I was getting a bit too far ahead of myself. I thought if I got out playing a silly shot, it'll put some pressure on the guys coming after me. I just try and concentrate on the run rate on what we need, try and take over from there and make sure we get that and put bad balls away.”

Stokes’s knock meant England is the only side to go to the semi-finals with an all-win record. The side has certainly lived up to the favourite’s tag, but Stokes wasn’t going to be overexcited yet. “We just want to keep building on that,” he said. “We know we're going well as a team and we've got potential. But we have two big games ahead of us.”