<\/p>\n
\u201cT<\/span>his week there\u2019s probably a lot more riding on it than it normally would be, going into the final game of a three-match series being 1-1,\u201d Ben Stokes said yesterday on Wednesday. He was facing the media for the first time since the first Test concluded with victory at Lord\u2019s when he spoke innocently about not being \u201creally happy until I get to share a beer with the boys\u201d. We all know how that went.<\/p>\n For England the story is of yet another reset, after the post-Ashes business-as-usual-only-different reset, which then led into a debutant-stuffed reset 2.0. The latter was forced by events in Chelsea\u2019s Rex Rooms nightclub and the England and Wales Cricket<\/a> Board\u2019s reaction to them. And now, after a physically and morally sapping defeat at the Oval and the ECB\u2019s conclusion that there was, to all intents and purposes, no incident at the Rex Rooms nighclub after all, England go again.<\/p>\n This time the pressure really is on, with Ben Stokes\u2019 side seeking the victory that would not only decide the series in their favour but provide much-needed evidence that they are not some kind of elaborate practical joke.<\/p>\n After their issues over the winter, coming into the series the situation demanded a projection of seriousness and competence. Evidently, that has not come to pass.<\/p>\n With New Zealand and Pakistan the visitors, this was always going to be a less intense summer than some, but it did not have to be so very village, marked by dodgy pitches, drunken escapades, rules that nobody knows, management whose reflexive reaction to a potential disciplinary breach that imperilled the career of their Test captain was to identify themselves as victims, total team overhauls from one game to the next.<\/p>\n Suddenly Stokes finds himself as \u201cdefinitely the highest amount of pressure we\u2019ve been under since me and Baz [Brendon McCullum] became coach and captain\u201d.<\/p>\n The decision of all England\u2019s senior figures to brazen out the post-Ashes furore and hope the situation would be calmed by a self-proclaimed reset and a few good results at home against theoretically beatable opponents seemed, after a rousing victory at Lord\u2019s<\/a>, to have allowed them to swerve a crisis. Now it is closing in on them again, potentially one defeat away.<\/p>\n