Stokes: Style not stats the key to get in!
ENGLAND captain Ben Stokes has told county cricket’s Test hopefuls to watch and learn from his side’s fearless approach against New Zealand if they want to join the ranks.
Stokes has brought about a remarkable revolution in his first three games as skipper, revitalising a side who had won just one of the last 17 Tests and chalking up a hat-trick of thrilling victories over the format’s reigning world champions.
He has never been one to take a backward step on a cricket field and his partnership with head coach Brendon Mccullum, who was also known as one of the most attacking players of his generation, has had a profound effect.
A side once gripped by fear has thrown off the shackles in stunning fashion, batting with an undiluted aggression that has yielded fireworks and showing the same spirit of adventure in the field.
Almost as soon as Jonny Bairstow put the finishing touches to a 3-0 series sweep in fitting fashion – with a six into the Headingley stands – England announced the same group of players had been picked to face India at Edgbaston on Friday.
That meant an unchanged squad of 14, plus wicketkeeper Sam Billings who replaced Ben Foakes in Leeds as a Covid substitute and stays on as cover.
And Stokes has made it clear anybody who wants to force their way into the set-up would be judged on their style as well as their statistics.
“These last three games should have sent a message to people who aspire to play Test cricket for England over the next two or three years, at least,” he said.
“I’d like to think that people watching know what they have to do to try and bang the door down and get in this team.
I’d like to think that people watching know what they have to do to try and bang the door down and get in this team. Ben Stokes
“It’s about the manner and the way you’re going to play, whether that be with a ball or a bat in your hand. It’s not necessarily your stats, or anything like that, it’s the manner you play which is probably going to be first and foremost in the selectors’ minds.
“What we want to do is build on this. It’s not just about us at the moment. It’s about the future as well and what I think we’ve done over the last three weeks is make people enjoy watching Test cricket again.
“If we were on the wrong side of results of these games, if they played out the same way but we’d lost, I would have walked off a very, very happy captain with the way everybody’s applied themselves and the attitude they’ve given to every single day, every single session, every single hour of these three Tests matches.”
Joe Root barely broke a sweat as he finished with 86 not out and fellow Yorkshireman Bairstow continued the form of his life as he crashed 77 not out to seal a seven-wicket win.
In keeping with their astonishing efforts over the past month, England needed just 15.2 overs and a shade over an hour to score the 113 runs required for victory, with a pair of local boys fittingly at the fore.
Bairstow, following up two unforgettable attacking centuries, blazed the second-fastest Test 50 in English history just a week after claiming the second-fastest hundred. He brought up his half-century in 30 balls, two more than Sir Ian Botham’s 1981 record, and finished the game with the last of three huge sixes.