The Headingley hero’s appearance gives us that ludicrous fake spark of hope that at some point in another life we too could have flicked that single off our hipsIt’s rare a sporting moment makes you shake. Last Sunday, while Ben Stokes was carving Australia to all parts of Headingley, I was in a park watching on my phone. As Nathan Lyon failed to collect the ball cleanly as Jack Leach wandered about in no man’s land I realised I had lost control of my body. The screen was all over the place.It might have happened before – but I’m rarely holding both sides of my TV at those critical moments. My scream of terror was too loud for the sunbathers....
It is hard to differentiate between a great game and a great finish but Ben Stokes’s Headingley miracle takes the biscuitBeing broad-minded, we had an unbeliever to stay the weekend. At some point on Sunday afternoon I yelled out of the window: “You’ve got to come and see this! It’s the most astonishing game!” A languorous, world-weary voice replied from the garden: “Cricket! Always astonishing. Always historic. Always unprecedented.” She never budged.It is true that this was cricket’s second astonishing-historic-unprecedented Sunday in six weeks. It is also true it was being shown on Sky, whose policy is that everything must be treated as a-h-u even if it’s a goalless draw between Barrow and Boreham Wood. Which makes it hard to...
Elysium Dream, owned by Stuart Broad, Jimmy Anderson and Eoin Morgan, back in training at Richard Hannon’s stablesAshes fever is spreading to racing and one focus of excitement is where a filly named Elysium Dream will run next – because she could well bring along to the track three of her owners plus teammates. Stuart Broad, Jimmy Anderson and Eoin Morgan are the stalwarts of The Racing Cricketers & Partner, the syndicate whose colours she runs in.The trio are regular racegoers and are often accompanied by Jonny Bairstow. Ben Stokes has also been seen in their company trackside. After Headingley’s Ashes Test spectacular, there would be a huge buzz at any race meeting attended by Stokes & co. That could...
He scored just one run but in his match-winning stand with Ben Stokes, England’s No 11 became the owner of cricket’s most famous pair of spectacles since the days of David SteeleWell, his running between the wickets borders on the diabolical. It is not straightforward to find a fresh slant upon Ben Stokes’s innings of the century – and possibly any century. However, he is not the first great player for whom there is considerable scope for improvement in this department. Denis Compton was in this category, so too Geoffrey Boycott and in this generation Kane Williamson – peerless batsmen yet sometimes harum-scarum runners.At Headingley Jos Buttler had to go and but for a Nathan Lyon fumble, which – as...
After a dizzying day in Leeds it is hard to imagine anything this year in this sport or any other eclipsing Ben Stokes’s display hereOh hell, just call it all off now. Forget the Premier League, cancel the Rugby World Cup, bin the world athletics championship and whatever else we’re supposed to get excited about in the coming weeks and months. And for goodness sake, junk the Hundred too. They’ll all pale after this Headingley Test, when Ben Stokes, that most unlikely saint, worked the second of the two miracles he needs for his canonisation. This was the innings of his lifetime, and everyone else’s too, certainly the best anyone has played for England since Ian Botham overturned odds of...