Ashes 2023: 'Over the moon' Ben Stokes hails trio of Woods, Woakes and Moeen after critical win at Headingley

England captain Ben Stokes has hailed his team after the win in 'another down-to-the-wire' Test at Headingley against Australia in Ashes 2023. With the win, the hosts kept the five-Test series alive and trail 1-2 with two more Tests to go. Stokes, however, insisted that the win is 'just the start' for them to win the Ashes.

"It's obviously really big in the context of the series," Stokes said. "We knew we needed to win this one to keep alive our hopes of winning the Ashes, so it's a good win. If you look at the first two games in terms of how tight they were, getting over the line in another tight game can mentally help, knowing that it's another close game but we've got over the line in this one.

"The first two didn't go our way. If you sort of flip it round and we didn't win this one and it's tight again, you would think, 'It's just not meant to be'. We're obviously over the moon that we won this one but it's just the start of what we know we need to do."

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The win was orchestrated by trio of Mark Wood, Chris Woakes and Moeen Ali. The three players, who were not part of the second Test at Lord's, produced a performance which had 15 wickets between them and some useful runs as well. In fact, it was Woakes and Woods at the crease who hit the winning runs for England.

"Woakesy, being out of the team for such a long period of time, and to come back in and perform the way that he did both with ball and with bat… seeing Woody running in like he does, big smile on his face and enjoying every moment out there was great," Stokes said.

"[And] I said before the series started that we decided to go with Mo back into the squad because of the impact he can have on games. I've played a lot of games with him and I know the impact he can have on his best days.

"You look at that little spell yesterday with 15 minutes when he took the wickets of Marnus [Labuschagne] and Steve [Smith] and that was a huge point in the game. That's Mo as a cricketer. You bring him into the team and you want him to be impactful with the ball and the bat and he certainly was with the ball this game."

The next Test start after a gap of nine days from July 9 in Manchester.

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