"He (Warner) just wouldn't shut up for most of my time out there. I could accept it from just about any other opponent" - Stokes © Getty

Ben Stokes has revealed his astonishing match-winning knock in Leeds against Australia was fuelled by the constant banter from David Warner. Stokes made unbeaten 135 to lead England to a one-wicket win and helped the side level the Ashes 1-1.

"I had extra personal motivation due to some things that were said to me out on the field on the evening of day three when I was trying to get through to stumps," read an extract published by Daily Mirror from Stokes's book 'On Fire'. A few of the Aussies were being quite chirpy, but in particular, David Warner seemed to have his heart set on disrupting me.

"He just wouldn't shut up for most of my time out there. I could accept it from just about any other opponent. Truly. Not from him, though. The changed man he was adamant he'd become, the one that hardly said boo to a goose and even went as far as claiming he had been re-nicknamed 'Humble' by his Australia teammates, had disappeared. Maybe his lack of form in his new guise had persuaded him that he needed to get the bull back?"

Warner endured a terrible run during the Ashes - scoring just 95 from nine innings - and Stokes felt the lack of runs got to him. "Although he'd enjoyed a prolific World Cup campaign, he had struggled with the bat at the start of the Ashes and was perhaps turning to his old ways to try to get the best out of himself. The nice-guy act had done nothing for his runs column," the all-rounder wrote.

"I muttered 'Bloody Warner' a few times as I was getting changed. The more time passed, the more it spurred me on. All kinds of ideas of what I might say to him at the end of the game went through my head. In the end, I vowed to do nothing other than shake his hand and say 'Well done' if I could manufacture the situation. You always shake the hands of every member of the opposing team at the end of a match. But this one would give me the greatest sense of satisfaction."

Stokes also shed light on Alex Hales being dropped from the ICC Cricket World Cup squad and stressed he was disappointed to know the details of his suspension from various news outlets. "The rest of us were truly taken aback when we found out that he was missing some cricket, citing personal reasons," he revealed. It was subsequently reported in the press that his absence was due to a 21-day suspension for failing two recreational drugs tests. The group of senior players within the squad had no idea that he had been suspended because the ECB's rules require it to keep such suspensions confidential.

"It was not that any of us wanted to pry into the troubles of one of our teammates; rather than Alex as an individual had not felt able to share his struggles with a group that he'd spent so much time with, in a team environment over the past few years, that bothered us.

"We had been a tight-knit team throughout Eoin Morgan's captaincy period and so reading the finer details in a newspaper was not a great way for us all to find out."