If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

 

With their backs against the wall

The brave stand tall.

One Maori-Kiwi Englishman

Held up an Aussie onslaught

On a sunny Saturday in Yorkshire.

Boycottesque, he only scored 2 in 50 balls,

The brave stand tall.

England needed 359 runs to save the Ashes

Stokes gave us hope, steadily and in flashes:

Boycott grit was replaced by Calypso flair

As if, in the cauldron of Leeds, nobody else was there,

More like Eden Gardens in Kolkata than steady Headingley in Leeds,

Only one man stood between the Aussies and the Ashes,.

England's last man in was the bespectacled Jack Leach,

He helped Stokes score the last 72 runs

By scoring a brilliant 1! 

Stokes' flashes of cricketing genius accelerated,

As risks paid dividends, And how.

With his back against the wall

This  Kiwi-Maori Englishman stood tall.