Stokes the bowler is back in nick of time
Six-wicket haul proves he has fire for front line All-rounder is ready to thrive in Ashes crucible
Ben Stokes bats like the wind is always at his back, and bowls like the wind is always in his face. Even in his more effervescent spells – and this was certainly one of those – the word that springs to mind is ‘reluctance’.
There is a tiredness to his gait as he runs in, a grimacing heaviness as he pulls up afterwards, the weary inertia of a man who has very recently abandoned a very comfortable sofa and half a pork pie. Stokes delivers the ball as if his sole objective is trying to get it as far away as possible.
Naturally there is an element of illusion to all this, part of the essential paradox of Stokes as a bowler. In truth, England’s vice-captain can bowl all day – and will, unless you forcibly stop him. There are days when a captain is powerless to wrench the ball from his hand, and here, on an overcast autumnal afternoon at Lord’s, you got the sense that even if Joe Root had wanted to give his close friend a breather, Stokes would have refused it with a harrumph. Thirteen unbroken overs, six wickets and a career-best Test return. Stokes the bowler is back, and just in time for the Ashes.
In becoming only the sixth Englishman to etch his name on to both Lord’s honours boards, Stokes resurrected a question that England have never quite managed to answer: what exactly is his best function as a bowler?
James Taylor, his former England team-mate, made an interesting point last week. As West Indies chased down 322 to win at Headingley, Stokes bowled just five overs, digging the ball in short with two men on the hook.
Since his early days at Durham, Stokes has always had a talent for swinging the ball: witness his previous Test six-wicket hauls, at Sydney and Trent Bridge in the last two Ashes series.
And so Taylor argued in his London Evening Standard column that using Stokes solely as an enforcer – as at Headingley – was a waste of his skills. “He is too good a bowler to be used only in that manner,” Taylor wrote. “Stokes is so skilful that he can take wickets in a number of different ways.”
Yet the popular misperception of Stokes as an abrasive, hit-the-deck bowler endures, one nourished by his burly frame, confrontational attitude and perhaps even English cricket’s hankering for an all-conquering, Flintoff-sized superhero. Perhaps the more appropriate comparison is with Ian Botham, a player whose gargantuan personality hid the fact he was a largely conventional English-style swing bowler.
Stokes’s numbers are those of a front-line option. There is ample evidence, too, that the more responsibility you give him, the better he performs. As England ponder their options ahead of the Ashes, marginalising Stokes as a bowler is about the gravest error they could make.
None of which, of course, gets us very much nearer decrypting the Stokes paradox. A fourth seamer who swings it more than England’s greatest-ever swing bowler. An aggressive character with a ferocious bumper who is best when pitching it up. A player who thrives on responsibility and prolonged spells, but who needs to be managed with the utmost care. A player of immense physical gifts who England simply cannot afford to get injured.
Do you use him in short bursts or long stretches? Get him on while the ball is still new, or save him for the old? Should he penetrate or contain? In a weird sort of way, yesterday’s display raised more of these questions than it answered.