The all-rounder spoke with assuredness on his plans, his father, the Bristol incident and last year’s break from the sportThere has been a fair amount of fretting about the prospect of Ben Stokes, England Test captain. Even after a weary Joe Root called him before Easter to explain he was stepping down from the job, his wife, Clare, immediately said “oh no, oh no, oh no”, knowing full well what was likely to follow. Yet as Stokes strolled into the Colin Milburn Lounge at Durham’s Riverside Ground on Tuesday, decked out in grey-blue England training gear and that fiery red hair slicked back like a Peaky Blinder, he looked like a man at peace with the promotion. This may be...
Whether effective or not, too many of England’s leaders have had to depart under a cloud, tarnishing their reputationThe career of an England Test captain, like a life in politics, always seems to end in failure. Maybe it’s at a tearful press conference after back-to-back thrashings by South Africa. Or by a hastily arranged England Cricket Board statement sent out after a row that also cost the head coach his job. Or off the back of an almighty spat with your star batsman that started when he was caught sending texts to the opposition slating your leadership. Or at the fag end of a slump of form in which the team lost five series in a row. In the end...
Latest Ashes collapse is overly familiar and a backdrop to the beginning of the end for Stokes-Bairstow-Buttler middle orderTypical: Christmas evening, you turn on the television and it’s another bloody repeat. Although in fairness to England, pick through the dental records of their latest Ashes capitulation and you might just be able to identify a few distinguishing features. And above all the defining quality of their Boxing Day fiasco in Melbourne was the sense of hopelessness and predestination: of a team and a generation whose narrative arc has finally run dry.There was a time when England collapses had a kind of fascinating car-crash quality. These days, by contrast, they feel strangely banal: tedious, overfamiliar, predictable, like a recurring anxiety dream....
The addition of Ben Stokes to England’s Ashes squad will lift Joe Root’s men and cause even the most confident of Australians to endure a few sleepless nightsHe’s back! The ginger-haired miracle-maker, the swaggering game-changer, the un-stoppered bottle of pungent cologne that promises the world with a single whiff. Yes, against all the odds, England will be drenched in eau de Ben Stokes during the Ashes this winter, and a little goes a very long way.Stokes has spent much of the summer bedding down, after stepping away from cricket to prioritise his mental health and to rest a left index finger that had been plaguing him since he broke it playing for the Rajasthan Royals in the first part of...
Cricket’s obsession with the all-rounder can be jarring but he inspires a special fuzzy feeling while anxiety in real life reignsBefore starting I’d just like to say I respect and cherish Ben Stokes. I venerate Ben Stokes. I revere him to the correct degree and in accordance with approved norms and standards.Let me make this clearer. Sometimes, while I’m thinking about how much I like Stokes, I’ll sit and watch his close-up TV highlights montages, then slow them down and watch them back, studying the way the droplets of moisture fall as he turns and yells and punches the air or looks soulful and defiant at second slip; until eventually it gets dark and the only light in the room...