Ben Stokes praises ‘relentless’ South Africa but refuses to panic after defeat

Ben Stokes promised he was “not going to throw my toys out of the pram” after the resurgence of England’s Test side under his leadership was emphatically derailed by South Africa at Lord’s.

After England slumped to defeat inside three days – the first of which was mostly lost to rain – by an innings and 12 runs their coach, Brendon McCullum, said some defeats were inevitable given the team’s aggressive gameplan.

“As we said at the outset, you have to buckle up for the ride,” he said. “The four Tests that we won recently, we were behind the game in each of them and were able to get ourselves back in front and put the opposition under pressure, which allowed us to go on and win. In this game we weren’t quite able to do that and we went on to lose. It’s such fine margins. We’ll have a good look at things among the group and then recharge.”

Stokes admitted his side had been comprehensively outplayed, but was optimistic that they could level the series at Old Trafford next week. “They were just relentless,” he said. “When you’re playing international sport, some days they’re going to be better than you. Over the three days, whenever they were batting or bowling, whatever we threw at them, they seemed to counteract that. It was an off game for us, and that’s absolutely fine. It’s not something I’m going to be throwing my toys out of the pram over. We’ll move on to the next Test, and go out there and try and win.”

For many members of the England team this was a first competitive game since they beat India at Edgbaston at the start of July, but Stokes refused to blame the hiatus for their poor performance. “If you start looking at that, I would say you’re just looking at excuses,” he said. “Five weeks away for this group is