We must be more ruthless: Stokes
BEN Stokes conceded England had not been ruthless enough with the bat after falling to a four-wicket defeat in the first Test against the West Indies.
Jermaine Blackwood scored a match-winning 95 as Test cricket’s big return ended with the tourists chasing down 200 to defeat the hosts in their Ageas Bowl ‘bubble.’
England set their target by squeezing 29 from the last two wickets to finish 313 all out, but it proved not to be enough.
“You’ve got to believe that’s enough,” Stokes said. “If you start to think that you don’t have quite enough on the board then you’re already losing.
“Ideally we would have liked to have got a lot more runs in the first innings. We got ourselves into some great positions at times with the bat and unfortunately we just weren’t ruthless enough to really go on and make our batting innings count.”
Stokes stood by his decision for England to bat first.
“We’ve got to be good enough to put firstinnings runs on the board,” he said.
“We got ourselves in positions in that first innings to really kick on, get 350, 400, and same when we came to bat again. We just didn’t quite manage to grasp the game.”
He also insisted he did not regret leaving out Stuart Broad.
“If I was to regret that, I don’t think that sends the right message to the other guys I picked,” Stokes said.