Ben Stokes insists England won’t change approach despite heavy South Africa defeat at Lord’s

Ben Stokes says England will not change their newly-aggressive approach despite being thrashed by South Africa inside three days at Lord’s and dismissed the suggestion the loss was a ‘wake-up call’ for his team.

England succumbed to an innings-and-12-run defeat in the opening Test against South Africa after being bowled out for 165 and 146.

It is the first setback of the Stokes-Brendon McCullum era, with England having beaten New Zealand in a Test series earlier in the summer and winning the one-off Test against India in fine style.

‘We’re disappointed to lose. It would be silly for me to say anything different,’ Stokes said after South Africa took a 1-0 lead in the three-Test series.

‘But we’ve got two more games to bounce back from this. We know that when we perform to what we are capable of, we are capable of some incredible performances like we have shown in the previous four games.

‘This isn’t a wake-up call or anything like that. We haven’t been able to execute the way we would like and South Africa were better than us.’

Asked whether the defeat has dented his confidence in England’s style of play, Stokes added: ‘Absolutely not.

‘I look at captains before me, captains after me – they are always going to get criticised at certain times by the way they want to play. That’s just part and parcel of life.

‘The message upstairs is going to be: “did we commit to everything we spoke about before this game?” If everyone can truly say that they did, that’s fine.

‘If we play good cricket, we give ourselves the best chance of winning the game. We’re trying not to be so fixated around the result because we didn’t think about the results in the first four games and it worked out pretty well.’

After bowling out England cheaply in the first