Big Ben reflects England's bold new approach

MUMBAI: Ever since Trevor Bayliss has taken over as coach, the England players have shed the conservative approach which had shackled their cricket for long. The players have been given the license to express themselves and the upshot of that has been the emergence of Ben Stokes as one of the most feared all-rounders in the game.
The 24-year-old has become the poster-boy of England's new found attitude after he smacked a record 250 against South Africa and the credit, Stokes said, goes to Bayliss, for giving him the freedom to play his natural game.
“For me it was very clear how I am going to play at the start of the New Zealand series. That was time when things started to change for us. I was given freedom to express myself. I just did that without having changed too many things,“ Stokes said on Wednesday .
The New Zealand-bor n all-rounder appears to have seamlessly fitted into the big shoes of Andrew Flintoff with his ability to swing the game with the bat or the ball. Stokes said the aggressive brand of cricket has worked for the England team and despite the recent reverses in South Africa, he feels there's no reason to discontinue with that kind of approach.
“I mean it's worked. (Coach) Trevor and (Eoin) Morgan gave us that freedom and even (Alastair) Cook in Tests. We are playing this attacking, positive brand of cricket which we have probably been talking about for the last two-three years but we have only started doing that in the last 12-18 months. It's obviously worked for us, so why stop doing it? We got a bit a criticism in South Africa for the two (Twenty20) games we lost but we won six before that,“ Stokes said.
With questions on England's inexperience cropping up repeatedly , Stokes appeared to have lost his patience momentarily . “I can't answer that question any differently,“ he said before adding, “We have shown in the recent series against Pakistan. We beat them 3-0.“