Ben Stokes: How a rebel in love with Test cricket is changing it

England’s Ben Stokes and Australia’s Pat Cummins won the first Test. (Reuters)

But Stokes is different; not that he’s necessarily better. There is something intangible about him that inspires those around him. He could influence the men around him, make them dazzle in his own light. Like Jack Leach in that epic last-wicket partnership at Headingley; he could create a colossus out of throwaways like Jonny Bairstow; he could entice the men he wanted out of retirement when Moeen Ali responded to his invitation to be part of the Ashes; Joe Root has taken his batting skills up a few notches. Of all the batsmen, it was Root who opened the Bazball shots under pressure in the first Test, turning and charging.

Stokes was also able to conquer fate, he could bend fate to perform unusual tricks, such as the bunt in the 2019 World Cup final; he could twist the fates. Sometimes Stokes makes moments, sometimes moments Stoke.

Entertain. That’s what we all are.

See Red Ball Revolution

Available now https://t.co/gtuGZCcVMp pic.twitter.com/1mJw9SBUf8

– England Cricket (@englandcricket) June 14, 2023

Nor does anyone epitomize Bazball’s systematic carelessness like Stokes. At the core of McCullum, Bazball and Stokes is the schoolboy excitement of playing the game. Playing the game just for fun, it produces them uncomplicated and untainted by greed and money. Absolutely, they play to win (as Stokes said, how every loss hurts), but winning seems almost secondary to the sheer fun they get from turning up and playing. Their play has a childlike innocence, free from the clutches of cynicism and negativity. And for all the bravado, there is no arrogance. Like Steve Waughs Invincibles without the toxic machismo. Fans have picked up on this vibe and are becoming evangelists.

As if the essence of their game is to put a smile on the faces of the spectators, to hit and bowl, to stay and scare with a smile. I’m more, guys, an exemplary guy. But it’s clear to me what I was trying to do here, Stokes wrote about his captaincy in the Players Tribune. McCullum elaborates: He has been brilliant, his message has been very consistent and also very clear. He doesn’t talk all the time, but when he does, it’s bang on.

That the men around him enjoy his leadership is evident in their joy. You could hear laughter and humming, giggling and talking. They are not deluded into thinking they can hunt any target or win a march from any disadvantage. Stokes has taken the nervous seriousness out of dressing rooms.

England’s Ben Stokes reacts during day five of the first Ashes Test cricket match at Edgbaston in Birmingham, England. (AP)

He is perhaps the least sober of England captains in recent times. Joe Roots’ silence was often a sign of nervousness; Andrew Strauss always walked with a battered look on his face; Kevin Pietersen used false brashness, Nasser Hussain faux-aggression, Michael Vaughan slightly aloof.

That doesn’t mean he’s flawless. Often there seems to be a blind subconscious commitment to rejecting everything orthodox. They ignored Usman Khawaja’s status as a weaker over-the-wickets attack and continued to outscore it despite the lack of results. Like a continental-style field with two snapping covers and snapping middles, he settled for Usman Khawaja before reaching his hundred. Khawaja nullified the threat by defending with soft hands. As he stood with Alex Carey, Stokes overran the latter. Before that, he provided Travis Head with plenty of scoring chances. There was barely any protection on the ropes and he stayed with Moeen Ali for far too long. His seven overs after the break spilled 45, 38 of which came via boundaries. The course of it, where a traditional dry-on-the-head affair would have frustrated the Australian batsmen. Likewise, he overstayed with Joe Root in the last-innings chase when the new ball was due. He ended up bleeding out. He also decided not to use the services of the most successful fast bowler in the history of the formats.

It is the flip side of non-conformity. But Stokes could identify instances where some of his radical tricks have worked in a Test. Like the Brumbrella pitch that melted Khawaja’s patience, or the short-ball blast in the first innings to clear the tail-ends. Tai sets about ripping Khawaja during the chase.

According to his own statement, he has lost bowling. Repeated injuries have tired his shoulders and knees. The pace has slowed down once when he used to reach 140 km/h early. The balls have lost their snap and bite once when he was a workhorse third seamer who was off endlessly, up the slope, against the wind, teetering like a local bus piled high with passengers, ensuring that the Rolls Royce-like Anderson and Broad got enough time to refuel. There was even a sense of unfulfillment that he never developed into the bowler he was advertised to be and never scaled to the helm of the all-rounders that his potential deserved.

But he has a knack for producing moments. And so he did. His fingertips always have a brush of magic, a stray ray of light, a touch of cosmic energy. And so he offered another moment. In just six balls.

England’s Ben Stokes celebrates with teammates after bowling Australia’s Usman Khawaja during day five of the first Ashes Test cricket match at Edgbaston in Birmingham. (AP)

The first two balls were length balls on leg stump. Possibly a looser or two, probably a couple of bait balls. Khawaja could try some outrageous, airy flick or push. He didn’t. So he came back to a good length off stump or just outside off. The Australian had left such a ball throughout the innings. Unlike Anderson or Broad, he doesn’t have to worry about the ball bending back violently to hit his pads or off stump. But Stokes gave him more time to react. Sometimes too long time is dangerous in cricket. Too many thoughts can cloud clarity. So Stokes, in a slow leg cutter, slipped into a curious three-finger grip of thumb, index and middle fingers and ring finger.

When the ball is released, the index and middle fingers move down the side of the ball so that the thumb circles under the ball, causing the ball to spin. The technique is the same, only the thumb is closer to the index finger than usual.

The ball hit almost the same area as the previous three. Only that it was slower and shallower. The ball went as if hitting the surface. Khawaja shaped to tap the ball towards cover but instead cramped himself and ended up chipping the ball to the stumps.

Had England gone for a thriller, it would have been a game-changing moment. Instead, Stokes endured the pain of the skier slipping from his grasp. Australia were 33 all out when he fired Nathan Lyon. Stokes can also be a fallible man on the field. Outside of that, he had suffered from depression and sometimes thought about giving up the game, suffering from panic attacks before games, as depicted in the moving documentary Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes. Best friend Stuart Broad even feared Stokes would never play cricket.

Two years into the murky space he’s wading through, he finds himself leading England forward with the thrill of dopamine-injecting cricket. It polishes his halo even brighter. A man who came back from the brink, a man who picked up the pieces of his scattered career and reglued them together to make a beautiful portrait. He is an aberrant, state school-educated England Test captain. He emotionally connects with the team and fans and makes them experience his own.

His tactics polarize the cricketing world, especially when they lose, but no one would disagree that his team does not excite. But for the tactical effort of Stokes and Co, in the hands of a more conventional captain, the game would have devolved into a dull, boring draw that the crowd would have forgotten before the match was over. But Stokess England fills them with memories and moments, something defining and eternal, a spectacle greater than victory or defeat. And remember how bad England were in Test cricket before Stokes took over.

His vision is nuanced to see the bigger picture. He wrote in the Players Tribune: What’s at stake, and it’s bigger than myself and my own goals on the field. It’s about inspiring the next generation of players. The landscape changes. Cricket as a sport is developing enormously. Faster than ever before. Formats like T20, The Hundred and ODIs bring money and opportunities to players that didn’t exist 15 years ago. but the best way to keep Test cricket alive and at the top of the sport is to work harder to show the players something that excites them and inspires them.

He doesn’t tread the trope of the cricketing intellectual, speaking with all the romantic test he feels about cricket, but through the lens of a rebel. It’s also essentially his brand of cricket: romance at its heart, but streaks of rebellion overlaid.