Being Ben Stokes: England’s all-weather cricketing stalwart

With bat or ball, the all-rounder continues to set the standard in terms of impact and consistency for the rest of the cricketing world to catch up.

Here’s what the last nine months have looked like for Ben Stokes. Lost the first Test as England captain to West Indies; scored starkly contrasting innings of 176 (356 balls) and 78 (57 balls, as opener) the next match to carve out a gritty win; cut short a Pakistan tour to attend to his ailing dad; became the first batsman in IPL to score a century in two successful chases; lost his father in December after a brief battle with brain cancer; went on to play every match on the India tour.

File Photo of England all-rounder Ben Stokes. (PTI)

Add to that winning the ODI World Cup for the first time, at home, and engineering an unbelievable Ashes Test win at Headingley with one of the great innings in the game. Now factor in that Stokes achieved all this after missing the 2018 Ashes in Australia following a brawl outside a bar in Bristol the previous September—he was cleared of affray in court and was seen as having saved a gay couple from homophobic abuse. Test skipper Joe Root paid tribute to the all-rounder as being in the presence of true greatness.

You might argue there are batsmen and bowlers far superior to Stokes. Better all-rounders? That too, if you go strictly by numbers or rating points (Jason Holder, Shakib Al Hasan, and Mohammad Nabi are ranked higher than Stokes in ICC lists across formats). But we are talking all-format versatility, about a team man you can trust to do anything for the cause—be it opening the batting or bowling, attacking in defence on the most challenging of surfaces, batting long to set up big totals, turning chases on its head with tail-enders or bowling in the death.

Whatever you need him to do, Stokes does all that and more. And he pushes his body to its limit—consistently bowling well above 130kph in sapping conditions after batting hours, for instance. The fear of burnout in Stokes, 29, is higher than in other all-rounders, even Holder. And yet, he perseveres. What keeps Stokes running is the insane hours put in the training, something England opener Dom Sibley described best last year.

“You look at the guys who have been in the system a long time… Ben Stokes is a bit of a freak when it comes to training,” he is quoted as saying in The Guardian. “It was after seeing him, Root, and Jos Buttler running in after a session in Colombo. I remember being absolutely spent, especially with the heat, so that was a real eye-opener. The graft those guys put in to stay at this level, for the amount of time they have done, is something that I want to do. That was part of my motivation.”

The more you sweat at training, the longer you play. Stokes is a fine example of this motto. In the last five years, Stokes has batted a creditable 10,901-plus minutes in all formats. Only Root, Virat Kohli, Steve Smith, Kane Williamson, Jonny Bairstow, and Cheteshwar Pujara have batted more. During the same time, only Adil Rashid (141), Holder (133), and Moeen Ali (129) have bowled in more matches across formats than Stokes (126). But no one has come close to playing as many Tests as a bowling option as Stokes (48) at the same time.

And he doesn’t just bowl to make up the numbers. First Test in India, Stokes fired in a full delivery to clean up Virat Kohli’s stumps when he was on 72. Not often can you dismiss the India captain at home like that. The fourth Test, with their backs to the wall, England gave Stokes an early spell. He didn’t disappoint, dismissing Kohli with a short delivery that caught him by surprise. It gave a peek into Stokes’s acumen, using different lengths to get the same batsman in different match scenarios. He is the quintessential English seamer who can get movement in helpful conditions but when pushed, Stokes can exploit other means to put batsmen in a spot of bother. Case in point is the second Test against West Indies where he bowled an incredible 91 bouncers to keep Jermaine Blackwood on the back foot.

An impactful batting record rounds off Stokes’s completeness but goes beyond numbers when trying to adjudicate his greatness. Against India’s ruthless spin attack on unpredictable surfaces, Stokes was the only batsman to consistently come forward, sweeping and driving to keep England in the game. It paid dividends in the first Test when England needed the acceleration after Root’s double-century graft. Before his record 60-ball 107 for Rajasthan Royals in the 2020 IPL, Stokes had scored just 110 runs from 103 balls without hitting a six. In that innings Stokes hit 14 fours and three sixes. And then in India, in what was only his second ODI since the World Cup final in 2019, Stokes blazed a 52-ball 99 in pursuit of India’s 336. That was the first time England had successfully chased a 300-plus total in India.

These are all pleasing numbers racked across formats. But it’s when you hear a batsman derive more satisfaction in playing 300 balls—“I never thought I would be capable of that,” Stokes said—than the fact that it fetched him a century (against West Indies) that you know Stokes is truly different. No wonder he holds the record for most balls left in an innings by an Englishman as well as the fastest half-century by an England opener (also against West Indies, Manchester 2020).

Here’s the thing though. Stokes isn’t only about all-round ability or supreme fitness. He is also a true leader who stands by his decisions. Like the extremely difficult choice of dropping Stuart Broad in the first Test against West Indies while filling in for Root, who had taken leave due to the birth of his child. It left Broad “angry and gutted” but he also didn’t fail to mention the “class” of Stokes who was ready to face any criticism. “He (Stokes) knocked on my hotel room door at 9pm on Thursday and asked for a chat,” wrote Broad in his Mail on Sunday column. “He said: ‘This is nothing about cricket. I just wanted to know how you’re feeling.’ That was a classy touch and the sort of thing that leads teams forward. If there were any doubts from the outside on how he would deal with being a captain, how he has conducted himself with me should dispel them.”

Cricketing logic dictates all-rounders have a better chance of leaving a mark every game because it gives them more opportunities to succeed. Very few, however, have managed to achieve that level of efficiency. Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, and Imran Khan belonged to another era that witnessed around 10 Tests and a scant number of ODIs every year. A professional cricketer playing all formats has to spend nearly eight months away from home, something Jacques Kallis managed to do for a few years. In hindsight, you have a better chance of beating burnout if you are a spin all-rounder. But Stokes has been putting himself on the line, especially since 2016 when he played IPL for the first time.

His redemption story is equally beguiling, dusting himself up from a bar fight to scaling numerous heights over the next two years, something Steve Smith and David Warner would love to emulate. England’s wealth of swing bowlers means Stokes isn’t bowled as much nowadays but his responsibilities somehow keep increasing. That Stokes remains England’s go-to guy despite their burgeoning riches tells you how special he is. You will see a lot more of him, in England and then later in India this year during the T20 World Cup. Considering how the last final in 2016 ended in heartbreak against Carlos Brathwaite’s six-hitting might at Eden Gardens, Stokes still has unfinished business in India.