Ashes 2025-26: England captain Ben Stokes offers no clues on fitness of himself or star quicks

Ben Stokes fronted the media in Western Australia on Wednesday nine days away from the first Ashes Test and remained tight-lipped selection and fitness.

He offered one-word responses to queries into his own fitness before playing an un-BazBall like straight bat to questions about Mark Wood and Jofra Archer.

“Good,” Stokes said when asked how his body was feeling.

“Yep,” he added, when pressed on whether his body was feeling good enough to get sustained bowling.

England is coming with an army of fast bowlers, headlined by its speedsters Archer and Wood.

Wood turned the 2023 series in England’s favour while Archer had a brilliant battle with Steve Smith without dismissing the Australian champion.

Stokes said both were “flying” in training but refused to reveal whether they would play together in Perth or be on managed loads.

“It would be exciting, wouldn’t it?” Stokes said.

“It’s nine days until that first Test match, so there’s a lot of time for stuff to fall into place or something to happen.

“At the moment, from a fast bowling point of view, the guys who we’ve picked are all in a really good place.”

One of the few questions Stokes offered an elaborate answer on was in response to England’s highly-criticised lead into the Ashes.

England is playing one warm-up match against the English Lions at Lilac Hill before taking on the Aussies at Optus Stadium next Friday.

Stokes knocked back suggestions England was underprepared, saying cricket had evolved from two or three warm-up matches.

“I don’t really know what we’re supposed to do, to be honest, we’ve been preparing for this for a long time,” he said.

“There’s obviously state cricket going on at the moment, I know a couple of the Australian boys are playing.

“Time obviously must be taken into consideration, we’ve had some of our squad members out here recently playing a series in New Zealand.

“The schedule is pretty jam packed … I think there’s a lot of factors that have changed over the years in cricket.

“In terms of preparation, we’ve been preparing for this for a very long time, we put a lot of time and effort into how we prepare for every series and that hasn’t changed with this one.”

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