Stokes must loosen shackles to lift hope of another miracle
Hall-rounder’s method of bunkering down against Patel and Ashwin is not working and affecting other facets of game
England are not yet out of the World Test Championship final, but their pulse rate is disturbingly low because Ben Stokes, at the heart of their side, has seldom seemed so vulnerable.
As Joe Root has run out of runs, England need a senior batsman to stand up in the third Test, and it is not too late yet, but England have not posted 200 since their first innings of this series.
To set India a target that causes them anxiety in Ahmedabad, England need their vice-captain and resident miracle-worker to rise again.
Since taking down India’s thirdchoice left-arm spinner in Chennai, by running down the track against Shahbaz Nadeem, Stokes has seemed to doubt himself. The state of his knees cannot give him confidence – 15 overs so far this series – and he is not going to be able to bowl much more in this match either, because his left foot has to land in a crater bigger than anything made by Perseverance’s landing on Mars. England’s selection of three pace bowlers might have worked on a firm pitch, but not where the creases have already turned to dust and hampered all of them: a feature unworthy of the magnificent new stadium.
Stokes in the course of this series has been converting from an allrounder, with the licence to bat as he likes, into a specialist batsman who has to bat as the team need. A different game altogether. England demand responsibility from their No 5. Andrew Flintoff and Ian Botham could throw the bat at No6.
A sweep against Axar Patel, a lofted straight drive against Ravichandran Ashwin, then Stokes was gone again for the fourth anonymous contribution in a row: seven, 18, eight and six.
The unsettling point for England supporters is not that he has failed since his rollicking 82 against Nadeem, but the shackles Stokes has imposed on himself. His latest 39 runs have taken 121 balls. The man born in New Zealand, who has played the greatest innings for England has, against India’s spinners, started to play French cricket.
Patel pinned Stokes on the crease, as so many of the England batsmen were, and prospects for Stokes’s second innings are not bright the way he is going. Ashwin dismisses Stokes once per Test on average: 10 times so far, and this is their 11th Test as adversaries.
Back at the drawing board Stokes might decide to bat with softer hands in Tests in India, and play back further in his crease to work the ball with his wrists into leg-side gaps, and thereby rotate the strike. Facing whole overs at a time from Ashwin and Patel on pitches designed for them does not increase a batsman’s life expectancy.
But Stokes never worried about working Nathan Lyon into gaps at Headingley in 2019: he either drove Australia’s off-spinner straight into the stands or reverse-swept him into the Western Terrace. And if he does run down the pitch in his second innings, preferably to Patel and not Ashwin, Stokes does not have to go through with a shot. Graham Thorpe, England’s batting coach, can tell any left-hander how to come down the pitch and then kick the ball away, the bowler’s length having been disrupted.
In their second innings England’s other batsmen are going to need more footwork, instead of being trapped on the crease by the ball skidding on.
Zak Crawley was wonderful so far as he went, using his reach to coverdrive, but it was still not enough to give England the start they have wanted this winter and have never had apart from when Rory Burns and Dom Sibley added 63 in the first Test at Chennai: this was the platform for Root’s double-century and Stokes’s 82 that took down Nadeem.
It was also out of Stokes’s normal character to floor the chance offered him at second slip. The third umpire, Chettithody Shamsuddin, was far too quick in his judgment – he should have called for at least one other angle – but the ball did appear to touch the grass even if Stokes had some fingers of his right hand underneath it.
To put saliva on the ball soon afterwards suggested again that Stokes was not quite with it. No duplicity intended at all, as he did it under the umpire’s nose, but still. Stokes sets himself the highest standards and did not reach them on day one, and if he does not in England’s second innings, the chance of that WTC final has finally gone.