Stokes made cricket seem visceral and modern again. Twice over. He gets my vote
THERE are six candidates for the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year Award and I would not quibble with any one of them if they were to be named the winner. Lewis Hamilton, Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Dina Asher-Smith, Raheem Sterling and Alun Wyn Jones have inspired and amazed in the last 12 months.
The truth, though, is that I didn’t have to think too hard about whom I would vote for this year. Maybe it helps that I was at Lord’s in July to see him lead England to victory in one of the greatest games of cricket there has ever been. Maybe it helps that I saw the start of his momentous innings at Headingley six weeks later.
So even though the standard seems higher than ever, even though it seems strange that Hamilton, our greatest active sportsman, should be overlooked again, the choice still seemed easier this year. The bookmakers consider there to be little room for argument and I agree with them: my choice would be Ben Stokes.
There is no point trying to highlight shortcomings in the cases of the other men and women on the list because there aren’t any. But Stokes did things in a golden summer for English cricket, which, even in a year when Tiger Woods won the US Masters again, tested the boundaries of sport’s capacity to deliver drama and redemption.
Like Woods, Stokes stopped the sporting world last year. He stopped it in its tracks and made it gaze at him with slack jaw and bulging eyes and bitten nails and beating heart. He did it not once but twice.
If you weren’t at Lord’s on July 14 as your chest tightened and face grew pale with nerves, you wished you were there. If you weren’t at Headingley on August 25, you will al ways remember where you watched Stokes do what he did that day to win the third Test against Australia.
It was the summer when Stokes redeemed himself and the sport he graces. It was the summer when a raw, special talent did what even an acquittal could not and wiped away the stain of his part in a late-night brawl in Bristol and the rush to judgment that preceded the trial that cleared him.
Stokes brought new levels of daring and versatility to a venerable old sport that is at a crossroads. At a time when it is searching for identity in a changing world, Stokes made cricket seem current and viable and visceral and dynamic again. The game needed a headline act like never before and Stokes gave them one. He gave it the greatest gift anyone could bestow on it. He gave it modernity.
Cricket is caught between the tradition of the Test match format and pushing the limits of the limited overs game. Because of that, there are times when it feels as if it is fighting for survival. Stokes waded fearlessly into that uncertainty and proved within the space of six enchanted weeks that cricket can still grip the nation. Stokes reassured us that, as the sport’s administrators try to persuade a new generation that cricket can still be relevant, as it prepares to sell us a new format called The Hundred, our summer sport can still occupy a prominent place in popular culture.
Stokes didn’t just win the World Cup for England for the first time last summer, he breathed new life into his sport. We know the details of what he did off by heart by now. He top-scored in England’s innings in the World Cup final against New Zealand, dragging his team back into the match, curbing his natural instincts to play an innings that combined savagery and discipline, and hauling England into a tie at the end of 50 overs.
Then he went out and repeated the feat. Already exhausted from his efforts, he top-scored in the Super Over, too, and helped to set New Zealand a total they could not overcome. We do not have many World Cup match winners in this country but in those moments on that Sunday, Stokes joined Sir Geoff Hurst and Jonny Wilkinson as heroes of our greatest sporting hours.
That might have been enough to win the BBC award on its own. But then, two months after the World Cup final, Stokes kept the Ashes series against Australia alive with an innings of 135 not out, which combined infinite patience, inspired strategy and incredible daring, to win the third Test at Headingley.
He masterminded England’s highest ever successful run chase, capped by the meticulous way he calculated risk and reward as he ran out of batting partners. At the climax of it all, Stokes shared an unbroken last-wicket stand of 76 with Jack Leach. Leach scored one run.
Many respected observers of the game, old and young, ex-players and journalists, said it was the greatest Test innings they had ever seen. It was an innings for the ages. And it was an innings for its age. It brought us the best of modern cricket. It brought us a glorious hybrid of all its arts. It brought us the best the game can offer.
On Saturday evening, Stokes scored two runs in his first 50 balls. Determined to stay at the crease, determined to win a match that most felt was lost, Stokes would not yield. And then on Sunday, he cut loose. The discipline was still there but he leavened it with a series of shots — in particular a reverse slog sweep for six over deep point — that were stunning in their conception and their execution. When he hit the winning runs, a new generation of England cricket fans was given its own summer to compete with Botham’s Ashes in 1981, its own highlight reel, its own moment in time, its own ‘I was there’ moment. We will always remember 2019 as the year that cricket came home. After all the striving, after all the years of hurt and disappointment and anti- climax, after all t he decades of trying to win the World Cup, it was Stokes, more than anyone else, who carried English cricket over the boundary to the pantheon where he and his team-mates will join the Boys of 66 and Martin Johnson’s rugby heroes of 2003. Stokes’ book recalling what happened is called On Fire. In a year of great achievements for British sportsmen and women, his twin triumphs burned the brightest.