BIRMINGHAM: England’s Test captain Ben Stokes opened up on his early declaration on the first day of the Ashes opener, stating that England wanted to “pounce” on Australia.

Opting to bat first in the Ashes opener, England put on a decent show with the bat in the first innings thanks to a brilliant 30th century by Joe Root.

With England at 393/8 in the closing minutes of the opening day and Joe Root still unbeaten on 118, England skipper made a surprising decision of calling for the declaration from the dugout.

Meanwhile, Stokes’s decision of an early declaration did not favour England as Australia, at the back of Usman Khawaja’s century, managed to finish just seven runs short.

England then piled up 273 in the second innings, setting a 281-run target for the recently-crowned World Test Champions.

Australia looked in trouble while chasing 281 when their first inning star Usman Khawaja walked back after scoring 65.

The visitors still needed 72 runs with just three wickets in hand with England sniffing the victory but Pat Cummins’s masterclass with the bat propelled Australia to an astonishing triumph.

Following England’s defeat, captain Ben Stokes came under fire on social media for the declaration but he justified the move, claiming that England wanted to “pounce” on Australia.

“I saw (the declaration) as an opportunity to pounce on Australia. No one likes to go out for 20 minutes at the back end of a day,” Stokes said following the match, as quoted by Sky Sports.

“Scoring 390 and then being able to declare sends a message to Australia about how we want to take them on.

“If we didn’t declare, would we have got that excitement like we did at the end? I’m not 100 per cent sure but I’m not going to be looking back at this game as what ifs. We just didn’t manage to get over the line.”

Ben Stokes went on to say that there were numerous points in the game where things could have gone the other way.

“I mean, look, you play cricket over five days. There’s so many things that goes on that you could look back at, you know, sort of 20 individual moments, which you could go like, ‘oh, if that happened, if that went our way could this game have been different?’ But, you know, I don’t like to look at things like that.

“We’ve managed to stand up to Australia and being in control for most of it makes it hurt a little bit more that we’ve lost but there are four more games left,” Stokes concluded.

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