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Big Ben: Cricket’s Mr Incredible Ben Stokes

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By
Jul 22, 2020 06:35 AM IST

Not just England captain Joe Root, even Ben Stokes’s IPL team-mates say they are in awe of what he brings to the table.

Is there anything Ben Stokes cannot do on a cricket field? Following the Old Trafford Test, or the 2019 international season for that matter, the answer to the above question is a resounding no. One way to sum up Stokes’s match-winning contribution against West Indies is via numbers—254 runs with the bat and three wickets with the ball. But that is a little too simplistic. For, the truth remains that the great all-rounder’s effort was a whole lot more than mere numbers. In the first essay he scored his slowest Test century (the hundred came off 255 balls). In difficult conditions, that was the need of the hour.

England's Ben Stokes hits a six.(REUTERS)
England's Ben Stokes hits a six.(REUTERS)

But when the need changed in the second innings, Stokes opened the England innings and smashed the fastest Test fifty by an English opener, ever. It doesn’t quite stop there.

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With the ball on the final day, the first-change bowler dismissed the dangerous half-centurion Jermaine Blackwood at the stroke of tea to turn the tide for his side. Just as he had in the first innings with the wicket of Kraigg Brathwaite, West Indies’ top individual innings-maker in the Test with 75.

All of the above, coupled with his magic at the 50-over World Cup and his miraculous 135* at the Ashes Test in Headingley last year makes Root claim that “we are in the presence of greatness.”

Sure. But what makes that greatness happen? A few behind-the-scenes men at Stokes’s IPL club, Rajasthan Royals, who seem to know him almost as well as his England team-mates try and explain just what makes Stokes tick; and just why he is cricket’s first “Mr. Incredible”.

TEAM FIRST, EVERYWHERE

When Royals firmed up their plans ahead of the 2018 IPL auction, Stokes was on their priority list. He had already been paid the biggest money for a foreigner by Pune in the previous season and his efforts had taken them all the way to the final. There was, however, only one doubt—Stokes’s newfound reputation for being a bad influence after his bar room/street brawl in Bristol the previous year.

As homework, a senior member of Royals’s team management called on Andrew Strauss, the former opener and then ECB’s Director of Cricket. “He is a No 1 guy, an absolute team man,” is said to have been Strauss’s reply. Having decided to build their team around him, Royals went all out for Stokes and got his services for 12.5 crore—the most expensive player in the 2018 auction.

Ben Stokes graphic. (HT)
Ben Stokes graphic. (HT)

In two seasons with the Jaipur team, Stokes has not been able to deliver the trophy to the franchise. But according to both players and the backroom staff, he has lived up to Strauss’ description and more.

“We have realised just why he is the best possible team man,” says Zubin Bharucha, Director of Cricket, Rajasthan Royals.

Bharucha believes that playing knocks such as the one in Headingley (where he scored 74 out of the last 76 runs in a last- wicket stand with Jack Leach) comes more naturally to Stokes than to others because he puts the team first.

“His mentality is to protect or defend his teammates. Everything he does is based on that,” says Bharucha, who was also a former opening batsman for Mumbai. “That is essentially who he is as a person. So, in tough situations, he thinks it is his responsibility to carry the team and that’s when he is at his best. That’s his biggest strength.”

Stokes himself said something similar after he collected his Player of the Match trophy in Manchester on Monday. “I’ll give everything to the team— whatever is asked of me. It’s a case of doing what’s needed at the time,” he said and that attitude comes as no surprise to Royals’s batting coach, Amol Muzumdar.

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“Just the attitude he has when it comes to playing hard cricket, that lets him do it,” says Muzumdar, before he talks of the work that Stokes puts into his game. “In my entire career, I have never seen a more hardworking cricketer. No wonder he gets the results. He just invests and invests in his skills with the right kind of attitude. And he is always looking to achieve something extraordinary. That’s why it has been a pleasure to work with him.”

Stokes, says Bharucha, also has no vested interests in his dealings with the management. “What you see is what you get. Lots of players are guarded or have an agenda when they want to speak to you. Not Stokes. He is a complete straight shooter and will tell you when something has gone well and will be equally honest should something not be right,” he says. “You always know where you stand with Stokes. It’s that straightforward.”

The players too are in awe of what Stokes brings to the table during an IPL campaign. Bharucha claims that Riyan Parag, one of the finds of the 2019 season and the youngest half-centurion in the tournament, performed the way he did only due to the confidence Stokes gave him. Parag agrees.

The best advice Stokes gave the boy will perhaps resonate with the youngsters in the game today. “In one game in Jaipur, CSK needed some 18 from the final over and Stokes conceded those runs. In the bus back to the hotel I sat next to him so I could learn how to deal with such lows,” says Parag, setting the story up.

“But Ben was looking into his phone. So, I asked him if he reads comments/hate messages. He said: ‘The only opinions that matter to me are from my friends, family and my kids. Nothing else matters to me.’ That taught me a lot.”

The ones who keep it uncomplicated in their heads are often destined for greatness. Stokes is no different.

Already the 29-year-old is being spoken about in the same breath as the great all-rounders of the 80s (Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Ian Botham, Richard Hadlee) and more recently, Jacques Kallis. In fact, he is only the sixth man to ever tally more than 4000 Test runs as well as 150 wickets, and is the second fastest to get there in terms of Tests (64) after the greatest, Sir Garfield Sobers (63 games).

But those who know him well will tell you that numbers and statistics mean as little to him as his own past. The former ensures that he doesn’t have a big head. And the latter helps him move on from incidents that could otherwise have had the potency to cripple a lesser man.

Before the brawl of 2017— which got him dropped from the Ashes later that year—Stokes was also at the receiving end of four consecutive sixes in the last over of a World Cup final in 2016, which in turn gave the West Indies their second T20 world title. The fourth six by Carlos Brathwaite, in fact, had Stokes on his knees in the middle of the Eden Gardens.

But when the focus was not on him, Stokes got up and dusted himself off, readying himself for the few ebbs and many flows that awaited him in the immediate future.

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