With ICC World Cup 2019 beginning on May 30 in England, Ben Stokes believes that England will be one of the favorites in the upcoming World Cup. This came after England concluded recent ODI series against Pakistan with a dominating win (4-0).

On England’s favourite tag

Ben Stokes said to IANS, “I think we have earned the right to be favourites with the cricket that we have played in the last three or four years. Being world no.1 you will always come into the tournament as favourites. If India or Australia were the no.1 ranked team, they would come into the tournament as favourites. But we cannot take the no.1 tag into the tournament if we want to win it because as you saw during the Champions Trophy (2017) that we were playing great cricket and then we got onto a wicket against Pakistan which wasn’t suited to our style and suited them more. But we have learnt from that and we are more capable to adapt to situations now than we were back then. We are a much better team now because we are able to read situations better.”

Stokes Shows Faith on the team for World Cup

This English all-rounder seemed excited and is waiting to play the tournament in front of the home crowd. He has complete faith on his team which is currently the number one on the ICC rankings. “We have Jason Roy, Jonny Bairstow, skipper Eoin Morgan and obviously Jos Buttler who go out and play these amazing innings. We also have guys who go under the radar but do their bits very consistently. And one person we definitely need to be firing is Morgan as he is a great leader of our team and when he is going, he keeps scoring. Both Buttler and Joe Root are high-quality players who go about doing their jobs, but I feel Eoin firing is really important.”

Ben Stokes confessed being a huge fan of both Virat Kohli and Steve Smith

While he thinks that everyone needs to be confident, he mentions himself as a huge fan of Steve Smith and Virat Kohli. He confessed how much he enjoys these two on the field. “They are both phenomenal players and have played quite a bit against both of them. You watch them play and they make the game look a lot more easier than others do. So, I am a massive fan of both the players. They have both got their own styles and they are both different in the way they play, but they are both very very effective. You obviously play against guys to win, but at the end of the day you got to look at it from an angle that I love cricket and I love watching both Virat and Steve go about doing their jobs so consistently.”

Written By Shreyasi Dravid

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