The time since Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have taken over the captaincy and coaching of England’s Test side, the entire cricketing world is talking about their aggressive and attacking approach to completely define the new era of Test cricket. Ben Stokes has shown some surprising decisions during his captaincy tenure since he took over the leadership from the former skipper Joe Root.
A similar has been seen recently during the ongoing first Ashes Test of the 2023 edition of this oldest rivalry between England and Australia. The cricket happened to witness completely unorthodox captaincy tactics from the England skipper Ben Stokes.
One of the moments came when the centurion Usman Khawaja was batting on an individual score of 141 runs and Australia had scored 372 runs for the loss of six wickets. Stokes introduced Ollie Robinson into the attack and placed a very strange field with six catchers in front of Khawaja, three on the leg side and three on the offside.
Apart from that, Stokes opted for no gully and no slip; just on the fourth ball of the over, this field placement forced Usman Khawaja to step out to play an innovative shot but he failed and Robinson’s yorker went on to uproot the off-stump to dismiss the Aussie southpaw finally on the score of 141 runs.
Subsequently, the cricket fans were also surprised and elated following this kind of tactic from the England skipper Ben Stokes. They immediately took to Twitter and lavished praise on The Three Lions’ skipper for his aggressive approach.
Here’s how fans reacted:
Whether it was the bizarre fielding
— Durgesh Singh Mertiya 🚩🇮🇳 (@DurgeshsMertiya) June 18, 2023
positions that confused Khawaja,
No slip no guly@benstokes38 field placement is out of the cricket book
#TheAshes #Ashes23 #ENGvsAUS pic.twitter.com/wsnIuhrN8R
Never seen such a field since hit & run (juniors)
— Ron Hudson (@ronhudson33) June 18, 2023
Stokes & McCullum rewriting test cricket ❤️🔥 Brilliant to watch 👏👏👏
— Rahul Hari (@rahul_hury) June 18, 2023
what A plan and field by stokes pic.twitter.com/rRSUrxSwhM
— rishiism (@rishiism_) June 18, 2023
Never seen such a field since hit & run (juniors)
— Ron Hudson (@ronhudson33) June 18, 2023
— Max 🇬🇧 (@MRMAXBRADLEY_) June 18, 2023
Unreal captaincy to generate a wicket, all bowlers and Stokes. Pitch giving 0
— SM💫 (@SauceLikeSharin) June 18, 2023
What a strange field…! But whatever, it seems to have worked ! #Ashes23
— THFCMike (@mike1974bell) June 18, 2023
Wt a spell💥💥💥
— . (@Hr_zx_) June 18, 2023
He played with his mind
— Pssdj (@Pssdj3) June 18, 2023
Bat fekne ka nateeja
— CricXP (@CricXP) June 18, 2023
Speaking of the current position of the ongoing first Test between England and Australia, the hosts finally managed to defend their first-innings total of 393 runs for the loss of eight wickets in the first innings. England bundled Australia on the score of 386 runs in the first innings to get the lead of 7 runs after the end of the first innings.