Stokes and some other blokes

I was ambivalent about Ben Stokes for a long time. Not negative at all, but ambivalent, wary of overpraising him in light of his actual regular contribution and his impressive not thereto mindblowing statistical record.

Some of that neutrality and caution was fair, some of it was, of course, an emotional response. We can’t really help the sportspeople we love. The England cricketers I’ve loved, whose triumphs and disasters I’ve felt with every fibre, have been David Gower, Graeme Hick, Mark Ramprakash, Phil Tufnell, Devon Malcolm, Chris Lewis, Michael Atherton, Ben Hollioake, Andrew Flintoff, Ian Bell, Adil Rashid (and I think Jofra’s on the way there …).

I’ve loved them for a few different reasons – character, talent and potential, vulnerability, perceived victimhood/outsider status. In quite a few cases, I’ve loved them because I caught an early glimpse and so felt invested in their journey – Bell I was lucky enough to see when he was about 11, Hollioake 15, Ramps was known around Middlesex for years, Flintoff I saw on some documentary about England Under-19s and felt an immediate sense of where he could go. With Stokes, it wasn’t quite that early but I remember seeing him score a hundred in around 2011 on one of Sky’s rare televised County Championship matches, and thinking “hello”.

But it still didn’t stick- even when he scored a 100 and took wickets in the disastrous 2013-14 Ashes series, a sure sign that there was greatness in the making, I held back. Even when he made 250* to win a test match in South Africa. Even then. Maybe the more so then. Because, I’d say, if you take away that innings, his stats are not actually that great, he bowls too many wild spells, gets out early too often, let’s just wait and see …

And I wasn’t totally sure if I liked him. Not that I was sure I disliked him, but I’d ask myself what I often ask; “what would he be like as a team-mate?” and not be sure of the answer. My days of team sports are long behind me, but I played enough cricket, football and rugby to identify types and dynamics, different kinds of tough guys, team men and arseholes. You see a lot when you’re the resident over-thinking, underperforming team flake, and you see who holds mistakes against you and treats you like an accident waiting to happen, and conversely you see who gets angry for a second if you mess up off their bowling, but applauds you next over if you do something well, who’s always cajoling and encouraging, trying to bring people up to their level.

It’s become clearer and clearer, I think, that Stokes is very much the latter, a guy who’ll get angry but not for long, who brings out the best, rather than the worst, in his team-mates. If Adil Rashid was the Monty Panesar of his generation in the field, it’s very clear that Adil’s (lately) been more nurtured, more heralded, less patronised, less othered, with great results. It was painful sometimes watching Monty’s team-mates get infuriated by some of his fielding, you could see and feel his isolation, sense their exasperation and ridicule. Stokes is clearly not someone who isolates.

I like him now, I realise. I like his honesty, his lack of showbiz, his sense of understatement, and of course, his drive for self-betterment … and his cricket. He plays on fury, like he’s avenging some great wrong, whatever that is. That’s quite rare for a cricketer, especially an England cricketer – I can think of very few others. It reminds me a little of Wayne Rooney – another sportsman I was unsure about to start with but came to like a great deal – far smarter and more serious than he was perceived to be, someone who played on brilliance, fury and more hard work than people gave him credit for. Arguably (not arguably really), Stokes the cricketer has already outdone Rooney the footballer, though.

Of course, we know (or think we know) where Stokes’ fury led one night in Bristol, but, actually, now all that is appropriate to say on that is that he was involved in a violent incident he shouldn’t have been, and was found not guilty any crime. And that’s all. What we can talk about with confidence is the effect it had on his cricket.

With hindsight, I’d say the ECB handled the situation just right – he was punished, in cricketing terms, pretty severely, but not pre-judged, not ostracised. But he missed the Ashes and was made to feel the weight of his own absence. It could have harmed his career badly. I thought it had for a while.

I felt he came back a lesser cricketer – scratching around for form and fire. I felt a year ago (hinted at here) that Stokes would settle into being a bowling all-rounder, an occasional batsman but more a reliable change seamer who you could build a team around, and stopped dazzling.

He had a decent but not outstanding winter 2018-19 with England – took some great catches, scratched around for the odd 50, bowled some really tiring spells – he began to seem less like the star of the team to me, across all formats. It was actually quite painful to watch him in the IPL this spring (where he’d been stellar in previous years) struggling with both bat and ball, if he bowled at all.

So, the World Cup came around and, to me, Buttler, Rashid, Roy, Morgan and potentially Archer would be England’s key men.

Then what happened?

Maybe it would have happened anyway, but let’s just remember that catch off Rashid against South Africa in the first match of the World Cup.

That catch which kickstarted the tournament, that catch which, we might have thought then, would have been top of Stokes’ highlight reel of the summer.

Maybe he took that catch and believed in his own capacity for greatness again.

Maybe.

Or maybe, more prosaically, hard work and serious thought started paying off. Because there was something different about the way Stokes was batting. Initially, that had seemed to me a bad thing. He seemed a lesser batsman than he’d been pre-ban. He seemed to have lost his spark. That even led me to wonder (oh little faith) if he was getting it wrong, batting too slowly, too carefully, in the World Cup final.

But now, in the light of what happened then, and in particular in the light of these last two tests, we realise that Stokes has worked, in the last year or so, to not just be a fine all-rounder, but to be a truly great batsman. That means graft, that means defence, that means scratching around sometimes, but it means believing in his own ability to go all the way, to play truly great innings regularly, not the occasional cracker and a few nice cameos.

This is where Stokes differs from Andrew Flintoff. Oddly, especially when you hear him talk about his career now, you get the impression Flintoff lacked self-belief. Really. He knew he was good, had star quality, could enteration and could do a job for the team, but he somehow didn’t invest in the idea of himself as a great bowler or batsman. Flintoff changed games by great spells of bowling, 3-30,a few big wickets, and he changed it with momentum-shifting 60s. His innings were usually pretty two-paced – play yourself in, get in, start whacking it. Once he got past 50, you knew he could lose patience any time, especially if he cracked a couple straight at the cover fielder.

Yes, he is just about a great cricketer, but unusual in the respect of not quite being a top batsman or bowler. But he did enough.

Stokes is different, I think. He’s already got almost double as many test centuries as Flintoff, and this could be just the beginning.

I think the comparison with Botham is truer. Botham was a truly great bowler, above anything else. Oddly, I myself never really watched that. From the year I started watching cricket, 1984, until his retirement in the early 90s, Botham was many things but he was no longer what defined him, a match-winning test bowler.

It’s funny, I’ve been scathing about Botham for years, but I wasn’t so indifferent to him as a child that I didn’t read two biographies and get to know just how fine a bowler he’d been in his youth. And even in his long waning, he was still pretty regularly a thrilling cricketer – two sixes off his first two balls in the 85 Ashes, breaking the world wicket record vs New Zealand, 100s down under in 86-87, sending stumps spiralling, a rapid 50 here, 80 sixes in a season, a hilarious out-of-character 50* to save a test vs Pakistan, starring in the 92 World Cup, he did all those things, but I don’t think I ever saw him win a match for England with the ball.

And he looked dreadful. Why, oh why, when he looked so cool in 1981, did he look like the bassist for a German soft-rock band now? And why was he so morose and lumpen on Question of Sport?

Perhaps in my disappointment with Botham came my investment in Flintoff – finally, someone to help us stop talking about Beefo the Beefmeister, (though it took years for Flintoff to have his all-too-brief aristeia, it always seemed likely, unlike the Capels and Ealhams of this world, that he would get there). Perhaps that same disappointment at the cricketer Botham became is the source of my wariness over Stokes.

But I don’t really see Stokes getting a highlighted mullet, and I don’t think he’ll follow both his forebears on to the sports quiz circuit.

I hope, like everyone, that he keeps his fury, but keeps it in check.

I hope that people don’t put too much on him. Stokes isn’t alone these days, or shouldn’t be. England have other (potentially) magical cricketers, across the formats.

Moeen Ali reached 1000 runs/100 wickets faster than Stokes, amazingly, and Mo, for all his inconsistency, has probably won more games for England with the ball and still averages over 30 with the bat. Chris Woakes, if he had arrived on the scene alone, has the stats himself for people to be talking about a new Botham. Sam Curran, if not mistreated, also has game-changing ability. Then there’s Jofra.

Then Buttler, Bairstow, Root, Roy, Broad, Anderson etc. they’re all magic cricketers in their way … perhaps that’s why I wasn’t willing to put all my focus on Stokes for a long time. He’s ok, I’d think, but he’s not everything.

Well, now, at least right now, he is everything. He’s had a sporting summer which just cannot be topped – he’s been Geoff Hurst, Jonny Wilkinson, Nick Faldo, Paula Radcliffe, Jessica Ennis-Hill all rolled into one.

There’s a tension right now, a tension to how these Ashes will go, a tension to how Stokes’ performances will go, a hope he won’t do something silly. This might be as good as it gets … well, it must be as good as it gets, because it doesn’t get any better.