Mr Positive Ben looks born to be the leader

IT’S still early days but, considering Ben Stokes didn’t have any real experience of red-ball captaincy before this series, you have to be impressed with what you see. Watching this England side, it is obvious who is leading the team. Sometimes it can be captaincy by committee, sometimes there is a lot of input from the outside to a captain but, at the moment, it is obvious who is wearing the armband. Stokes has good body language and he is always at mid-off chatting with, and cajoling, his bowler.

He backs people. In the first hour yesterday, he went with the left-arm spin of Jack Leach and was rewarded. Leach was under a bit of pressure but I have noticed both here and in Nottingham, where he was also introduced into the attack early, that Stokes is constantly behind him.

I also like the way he brings fielders up for his spinner. Last game, Leach got Tom Blundell out by having a man in at mid-off. Then, before tea yesterday, although it ended up being a freak dismissal, had he not changed the long-on and invited the chance to hit him over the top, Henry Nicholls would not have gone for the expansive shot that cost him his wicket.

Captaincy tends to follow your personality and Stokes is erring on the side of positive and attacking — but not reckless — cricket. It is how he is as a batter. He has instilled an attacking mindset into England. He strikes me as someone who, even when he was not captain, would always be thinking about the game. Should we have that man back? Should the catchers be kept in?

He’s made Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson buy into a fuller length, gives them a mid-off and mid-on, and moves fielders straighter to provide a bit of cover if they get driven for four.

You will never change world-class bowlers like them completely, because they have been so successful at doing things their way and will occasionally switch back to their default settings. But they are hunting wickets more and that is partly because Stokes is encouraging them to do so by giving them the field settings required to do that.

There have been positive signs of his leadership rubbing off on others, too. Alex Lees came into this summer with a reputation as a bit of a blocker but has been encouraged to return to the more aggressive game of his youth.

Leach showed with two for 75 from 30 overs that he can perform a holding role as a front-line spinner. His dismissal of Will Young was a classic example of getting that drop and drift, and the batter getting his pad in the way and not being able to access the ball. He deceived his opponent slightly in the air and it was a good sign that he can offer a threat while performing that holding role.

Stokes (below) did not bowl himself yesterday but, when things have been going so well and you’ve had a knee niggle, why risk a long-term injury?

If the score was 200 for three, then perhaps we’d have seen him have a bowl because he does not want to ask people to do things he’s not prepared to do himself. When you have one seamer on debut in Jamie Overton, and another, Broad, who is 36 today, you don’t want to run them into the ground. That’s why he turned more to Leach and Joe Root, who is under-valued as a bowler.

The challenge will be keeping the positive approach going when the team is under pressure, having been bowled out for a sub-150 score, like in the first match of this series at Lord’s.

But so far, so good with this new regime.