‘Aagaya one-man army’ – Fans react as Ben Stokes set to play his first ODI World Cup 2023 match on October 21 against South Africa

England suffered an embarrassing 69-run loss to Afghanistan in the 13th match of the ongoing ODI World Cup 2023 on October 15 at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi. They also lost their first match of the tournament which was against New Zealand and that too by 9 wickets. However, the loss against Afghanistan must be hurting them a lot as they are the defending champions while the Aghan team had a 14-match losing streak which they ended by defeating England. 

It is to be believed that one of the main reasons behind England’s horrible performance in the tournament so far is the absence of their star allrounder Ben Stokes who didn’t play the first 3 matches of the tournament due to injury. However, there are some reports suggesting that Stokes is set to return to the playing XI against South Africa on October 21 in Lucknow. 

Fingers crossed, he can tick off all the things: Matthew Mott

England’s head coach Matthew Mott recently talked about Stokes and said that they have been very conservative with the star allrounder. He is hoping that Stokes will be playing the match against South Africa as they can’t afford any further loss from here. India, New Zealand and South Africa are already rolling high in confidence.

“We’ve obviously been relatively conservative with him, but the medical staff were always confident that South Africa was a game we could target. I haven’t had a report on him in the last 24 hours, but before that, he was on target.

So, fingers crossed, he can tick off all the things that need to be ticked off and he comes back into that side. He’s like the spiritual leader of the group in many ways, and he certainly spoke really well after the game the other day, and spoke about that need to really assert ourselves.” Mott was quoted as saying by Circle of Cricket.

Here’s how fans reacted: