From praise for the ‘indomitable’ Ben Stokes to hand-wringing over ‘a national cricketing nightmare’, this loss won’t be easily forgotten
Drink it in, England. Intravenously connect this to your veins. While you’ve been sleeping or celebrating, Australia has been despairing over the devastation of Headingley, with innumerable takes appearing across the country; each attempting to reckon with Ben Stokes’s unprecedented heroics.
While Wikipedia was busy revising its explanation of the Ashes to “a Test cricket series played between Ben Stokes and Australia”, across the wide brown land there is benevolence, blame and everything in between. And it’s not just cricket experts proffering reactions. The result in Leeds went to the very top (administratively speaking), with prime minister Scott Morrison electing to comment from the
G7 Summit in Biarritz, saying he was awaiting some stick from his
UK counterpart Boris Johnson.