Manchester: England captain Ben Stokes has refused to sign the over-rate form provided by the ICC match referee. Signing it will be an admission of guilt that his team didn’t abide by the necessary stipulations, but Stokes is of the view that there should be different over-rate norms for subcontinental conditions and SENA countries, where seam bowlers are in action most of the time.England were docked two World Test Championship (WTC) points after the end of the last Test last week.“Over-rate isn’t something that I worry about, but that’s not saying that I purposely slow things down. I do understand the frustration around it, but I honestly think there needs to be a real hard look at how it’s structured.“You can’t have the same rules in Asia — where a spinner is bowling 70% of the overs — as in New Zealand, Australia, England, where it’s going to be 70-80% seam,” he said on Tuesday.
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Do you agree with Ben Stokes’ view on different over-rate norms for subcontinental conditions?
“Throughout the course of a game, the time of overs is going to come down because you’ve just got tired bodies. That was our 15th day of cricket. We obviously had an injury to our spinner Shoaib Bashir. We couldn’t turn to our spinner as much as we would have liked to on Day Five. The scoring rates are high. That means there are more balls hit to the boundaries. It takes time to fetch the balls and get started again.”
England team brings in All Blacks psychologist
The England team has hired the services of Enoka Gilbert, a former mental skills coach with the New Zealand rugby and cricket teams.“Me and Baz (McCullum) spoke a lot about what we want to do and how we want to take the team forward.“We can say as much as we want, but we don’t have the knowledge or the experience in pushing teams on to the next level. He (Gilbert) been able to put into words what we want to do a lot better than what me and Baz would ever be able to do,” Stokes said.
