Brendon McCullum has expressed confidence in Ben Stokes' ability to recover from a challenging tour of Pakistan, acknowledging that the England captain is currently 'hurting' after returning from a hamstring injury that sidelined him during the team's sole victory and subsequent two defeats. McCullum highlighted Stokes' resilience, describing him as 'a tough bugger' who will undoubtedly bounce back. Stokes' performance in the series was underwhelming, averaging just 13.25 with the bat and failing to take a wicket in his 10 overs of bowling. 'We all know how competitive and driven the skipper is. He'll be hurting right now [and] it's my job to make sure I'm there to support him,' McCullum, the England head coach, stated.

'Look, that injury was quite a significant injury. He had to work incredibly hard to get back. As the driven athlete he is, he's all in when he does something. He had to put in a lot of graft and subconsciously it can … not cloud things, but maybe you're not quite as screwed down as you can be in terms of decision making. He's disappointed but he's our skipper and we know he's a tough bugger. He'll make sure he'll come back and it's our job to make sure we wrap our arms around him and help him along the way,' McCullum added.

McCullum attributed England's defeat to a lack of a killer instinct, asserting that his team had positioned themselves to win both of the last two Tests. 'We had our chances,' he said. 'Many times in the last two Tests you would argue we were in front of the game and we let that slip. We weren't able to sustain pressure and transfer pressure back on to them. When Pakistan got a sniff they were very good, and we weren't able to handle that.'

Reflecting on the past couple of years, McCullum noted that England had won five and lost five out of 10 Tests in the sub-continent, which he considered 'OK' but disappointing given the opportunities missed. 'You don't get too many opportunities to nail down big series in the sub-continent. We've had those chances and we weren't quite good enough,' he said. However, McCullum conceded that 'in the end they were much better than us in these conditions.'

The performances of Noman Ali and Sajid Khan, who took 39 of the 40 English wickets in the last two games, exposed a weakness against spin, which Nasser Hussain described as 'kryptonite to Bazball.' 'I know we don't come back to the sub-continent for a couple of years, but there's still times even in other countries when we're presented with spinning wickets and we've got to make sure our approach is a little bit more screwed down, a bit better than it is,' McCullum said. 'With failure, sometimes it brings about a bit of deeper thought, and that's something we'll have to do over the next little while.'

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