England arrive at Headingley for the start of the third Test facing up to the potential death of one dream, but insisting that another will survive. “I don’t know if we want to say it,” Ben Stokes said, “but the Ashes is obviously over if things don’t go well – but the team isn’t over.”

Since Stokes and the head coach, Brendon McCullum, were appointed last year England’s rollercoaster has largely been cranking skywards. However narrow the margins that decided the first two Ashes Tests this is the first precipitous dip – and the challenge now is to apply the brakes.

“This is the moment,” Stokes said. “It starts here at Headingley and we’ve got to win this game. We’ve got to keep looking to press the game on.

“We’ve got to keep looking in every situation to influence the game back in our favour and put Australia under pressure, because we know we need to win this game to keep the Ashes alive. Some people might see that as pressure whereas I think myself and the rest of the team see it as a massive opportunity.”

Opportunity knocks in particular for Harry Brook, promoted to No 3 as a result of Ollie Pope’s series-ending shoulder injury, and for Jonny Bairstow, bumped back up to No 5, from where he caused such carnage last summer. Joe Root is sandwiched between them in an all-Yorkshire triple whammy to further fuel the Headingley crowd.

“It’s an amazing atmosphere here, it always has been,” Stokes said. “When we’re on top here they get going with us, but even when things aren’t going our way they’re always here with us. But I think they absolutely love the fact that Yorkshire people walk out and play here. It’s the old saying: strong Yorkshire, strong England.”

Brook’s promotion, given the success he has had lower down the order and his limited and largely unhappy experience at No 3, seems particularly bold. “He’s technically very gifted and players like that you feel can bat anywhere,” Stokes said. “We want to keep Joe at four because he’s a remarkable player, and moving Jonny to five was just to get him into the game earlier. The things he did last summer in our No 5 position are quite hard to look past.”

When it comes to delivering this news, the picture Stokes painted was of him prowling the nets, dropping selection bombs on unsuspecting cricketers. Bairstow, he said, “was batting in the nets and I just walked up to him and said: ‘You’re batting five’”. As for Brook: “I actually told him in the nets when he was batting. As soon as I said he’s batting three, he said to Jeets [the spin-bowling coach Jeetan Patel]: ‘Ah, can I have a new ball please?’ He gets it and just cracks on.”

The selection of four seamers in addition to the returning Moeen Ali was intended to protect Stokes, who after his exertions with bat and ball at Lord’s has limited gas in the tank. “That last week took it out of me a little bit,” he said. “So I had to think: ‘What would be the best team if I wasn’t to bowl a ball in this game? Now I don’t feel as if I’m under too much pressure to bowl.”

Stokes said the rumbling furore over Bairstow’s second-innings dismissal at Lord’s has had no impact on the atmosphere inside England’s dressing room – “I don’t think we can galvanise as a group any more than we are to be honest” – and that “the best thing that everyone needs to do is just move on from it”.

Perhaps Headingley can be a little slow to move on – still no Australian can come here without being reminded of Botham’s Ashes in 1981, or of course the Stokes-inspired miracle of four years ago – but the England captain said there was no magic behind the venue’s mythology.

“This ground has some great memories and they always seem to be brought up when we come here. I think the magical thing that could happen this week is for us to win the game and keep the Ashes alive.”