“He'll be sweet for Ashes”, says Brendon McCullum

England head coach Brendon McCullum expresses that he has no concerns that Ben Stokes playing in the Indian T20 League will endanger the skipper’s chances of participating in the Ashes this year. 

Stokes have been going through a knee injury which has bothered him for a long time and he also got under pressure at certain moments and hence skip the worthwhile Indian T20 League which is beginning at the end of this month. 

The team’s coach McCullum however said that the all-rounder had built his career by culminating in big moments and the Ashes against Australia in June and July would be no different.  

"I .. believe that the Ashes is the script that the skipper is waiting to write, so he'll be sweet. I don't have any concerns," he told reporters in Wellington at the conclusion of the drawn series with New Zealand.

“I don't think he's jeopardising it. I know that Chennai set-up, I played for that franchise, and it is excellent in looking after the players.

"He knows how to get right for the big moments. His life is that, right? When he comes back into the fold and leads us into the Ashes campaign, he'll have the bit between his teeth and I think we'll be all right.”

Ben Stokes has already expressed that he will leave for the Indian T20 League early to get ready for a one-off Test against Ireland at the Lord’s Cricket Ground on June 1 and the first Ashes at the Edgbaston Cricket Ground, which starts on June 15. 

The coach and the skipper have led the ‘Three Headed Lions’ to 10 wins in 12 Tests since his tenure started the previous year on the back of an aggressive style of play, “Bazball” introduced by the Kiwi Coach which is also his nickname. 

Their second loss came in the most recent match on Tuesday when New Zealand won in a nail-biting thriller by a margin of just 1 run. Also, they became the only fourth team in this world to snatch victory in a Test match after being asked to follow on McCullum’s side. Later on, stokes was not regretting the decision to execute the follow-on plan and said there was not likely to be much change to the way England approached the game. 

"I think there'll be tens of millions of people around the world that sat back and enjoyed that test match," he added.

"Now we have the opportunity to really turn our attention to what's going to be a pretty amazing time in the guys' lives an Ashes series at home against a good Australian side.

"We'll go into it with a lot of confidence. We know it's not going to be easy, but I'm pretty sure we will play a very similar style of cricket that we've played throughout the last eight or nine months. And with eight or nine months of development of that style under our belt, we should be hard to beat.”