Ben Stokes has admitted he enjoyed working with Australia captain Steve Smith as he embarks on a relentless six months with England.

Australian Smith and Cumbrian all-rounder Stokes played together for Rising Pune Supergiant in the Indian Premier League.

But this afternoon Stokes, from Cockermouth, will get back to England duty at Headingley for the first of three One-Day Internationals against South Africa.

Those ODIs will be followed by the ICC Champions Trophy in June, which is then followed by three Twenty20 matches and a four-match Test series against the Proteas.

Following that, West Indies will head to the UK and play England in a Twenty20 game, before facing the Three Lions in their own Test match and then One-Day International series.

But that will all be leading up to the 2017–18 Ashes series in Australia, which will get under way in late November.

Come November 23 at the Gabba, Stokes and Smith are likely to line up against each other – provided they are both fit and available – to renew cricket’s oldest rivalry in the first Test.

But Stokes admitted the Ashes rivalry caused few problems while the pair played together in the IPL, and the Cumbrian added he was happy to take tips off the Australian skipper.

Stokes said: “Once you get in the same team together, you obviously want the same goal, which is to win.

“And if a guy wants to improve on something and another guy has a tip that can help, they are obviously going to share that with you.

“I remember doing a batting session with some power hitting towards the end where the guy who I will actually be playing against in the Ashes [Smith] was helping me, which is something that you would never be able to fathom when you are playing against each other.

“From the hype around England against Australia, to playing with him. It was really good, actually.”

Stokes and wicketkeeper Jos Buttler, who played for eventual champions Mumbai Indians, both came in for criticism after missing the end of the IPL to join an England training camp in Spain.

“I think there was a lot of criticism about that purely because it was in Spain,” Cumbrian Stokes said.

“If we’d done something like that in England, I don’t think there would have been a bean said at all.”