Ben Stokes walks to the wicket slowly. This is pretty much the only thing he does slowly these days. Harry Brook tries to say a few words to him as he arrives, but Stokes isn’t really listening. There’s a little poke and a nudge of the pitch, dust and debris swept away with a swish of his bat, a kind of purification ritual, like a sumo sanctifying the dohyo. He takes his time, makes us wait, makes us watch: a man who has long since made his peace with the gaze of others. This is his turf, his team, his time, and there is a certain theatrical flourish to the way he stretches out the moment for all it is worth.
There is a frisson around the ground, and of course there always was when Stokes walked in to bat, but ever since he became captain and began to mould this team in his image he has also batted with the expectation of leadership. With the knowledge that his teammates on the dressing‑room balcony are taking their cue from him, that an entire playing philosophy has been built around his approach. These days when Stokes bats we don’t simply demand to be entertained, but enlightened. We want him to set an example. We want him to blaze the righteous path to truth, ideally by smashing it as hard as possible as soon as possible.
Instead, something else happens. Stokes blocks his first two balls, prods at his third, defends his fourth, taps his fifth away for a no-vibes single. Nathan Lyon has been bowling brilliantly all Test, mumbling and shuffling away like a hipster Dominic Cummings. He demands maximum respect, which is all very well unless you are playing a style of cricket that dictates minimum respect at all times. Josh Hazlewood comes on at the other end and Stokes brazens out a maiden. Another block off Lyon. Another block off Hazlewood. All of a sudden England’s captain is one off 13 balls. What’s the matter, Ben? What’s going on? Do you not realise there’s a Tuesday golf game at stake here?
On he goes: two off 14 balls, three off 19 balls, nine off 29 balls, and still not a hint of aggression to be seen beyond the odd exploratory waddle up the pitch. And of course seen through a rational lens this is exactly what the match situation demands from Stokes at this point, with England effectively 140 for four, the game in the balance and plenty of time left. Perhaps, you wonder, this is the logical next step for Bazball: meta-Bazball, violating everyone’s hackneyed expectations of Bazball by playing immaculate conventional Test cricket. Ladies and gentlemen, he’s done us again.
But then zoom out a little and there is a curious missing ingredient from England’s Ben Stokes era: a defining or match-winning performance by Stokes himself. Try to remember the outstanding individual displays of the Bazball era and you will probably be able to reel off Brook’s centuries, Jonny Bairstow’s trail of destruction, the genius of Joe Root and Stuart Broad, match-winning spells by Jimmy Anderson and Ollie Robinson, Jack Leach’s 10 wickets at Headingley.
Stokes, by contrast, has offered plenty of little cameos and support acts, brief blitzes and crucial wickets. There has been one century, at Old Trafford last summer, a knock later surpassed by Ben Foakes. The batting average of 35 is roughly in line with his career mark. But perhaps the real clincher is the fact that since becoming permanent captain Stokes is only 14th on the list of England strike rates. These days Root – a batter who openly questioned his relevance in the Bazball era – is scoring more quickly than Stokes, who literally invented it. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, the architect of England’s new style has retreated into a kind of ceremonial figurehead status: a man of word as much as deed, Mike Brearley in a bucket hat.
Why this might be is another issue altogether, and this skittish and uneven innings of 43 offered a few clues. Eventually Stokes began to play some chords: stepping out to mow Pat Cummins through midwicket for four and then stepping back to carve him through third, cutting Scott Boland in front of square, sweeping Lyon powerfully behind. But the rhythm and flow was never quite there: the feet not really moving, or moving too much, a batter caught between pure instinct and self-expectation, between playing the way he should be playing, and just “playing”. And it was with a certain inevitability that eventually Cummins cleaned him up: an indeterminate prod on the crease, a thud of the pads, a ball he could have played in his sleep.
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Perhaps it should not be surprising that a man who has spent most of the past year trying to empower others has apparently forgotten how to empower himself. And in large part this is a dilemma encountered by captains through history: how to synthesise their own needs with that of the team, the selflessness of leadership and the selfishness of batting. English cricket badly needed Stokes the captain. There will come a time soon when they need Stokes the cricketer again.
