So how do England make room for Stokes?
With ODI and T20 sides firing on all cylinders, coaches have a riddle to solve, says Tim Wigmore
How do you get Ben Stokes back in England’s team? For England, it is a most welcome question. And it is one that they could face a week on Sunday, when Stokes should be available for the final Twenty20 international against India.
First, he must come through a T20 for Durham. Stokes will make his return from a hamstring injury against Yorkshire at Headingley next Thursday, in Durham’s first game of the new Vitality Blast season, playing as a specialist batsman. But he has already begun bowling in rehab and is expected to be available to bowl on his England return.
Against Australia, England authored a perfect limited-overs streak – a 5-0 one-day international whitewash backed up by an emphatic T20 international victory – all without Stokes. Some wags even posed the question: do England need Stokes at all?
In ODI cricket, even the question is absurd. Stokes is worth his place as a batsman alone: he averages 61.44 in the past two years, even discounting his bowling. Still, how to fit him in remains a riddle.
Until England’s ODI series against Australia, Alex Hales was the spare batsman in the side, meaning that he would vacate the No3 position, the middle order would shuffle up a place and Stokes would return at No5. Hales’s fine ODI summer – 284 runs at 56.80, including a remarkable 147 from 92 balls in the team’s world-record score at Trent Bridge – has encouraged England to re-evaluate their thinking.
Joe Root’s useful off-spin, including 10 overs for 44 at Chester-le-street, was significant, suggesting England could rely on him as a sixth bowler, in support of Stokes and a four-man attack.
Were that the case, Stokes could return at six, with Jos Buttler at seven and Moeen Ali at eight, completing the most intimidating batting line-up in ODI history. One of the specialist seamers would then drop out, leaving Stokes as third seamer unless England dropped Moeen or Adil Rashid.
The danger with this approach is that Stokes is an erratic ODI bowler, as a career economy rate just over six attests. Then again, with England’s batting line-up, that might never matter.
In T20, the equation is similar. Of the XI who played against Australia on Wednesday, one of Moeen, David Willey or Chris Jordan would be most likely to give way to Stokes, unless England decided they could dispense with a specialist batsman. If they did so, Root might be the most vulnerable, but assistant coach Paul Farbrace said they would be loath to do so.
“You do need nous and you do need people playing in different ways,” Farbrace said. “There will be times when he is the outstanding player in a T20 game and get us over the line.”
There is another, more outlandish, option: not to pick Stokes at all. The bare facts of his record for England in T20: an average of 14.76 with the bat to go with one of 48.50 – conceding runs at more than nine an over – with the ball do not implore selection.
No one believes England intend to go into the World Twenty20s in 2020 and 2021 without Stokes in their side. “The fact he is a three-in-one, he can bowl and he is the best fielder, you are going to bring him in as soon as he is available,” Farbrace said. In preparation for the World T20, England “are trying to experiment and make sure we give ourselves the best chance come 2020”.
How best to reincorporate Stokes to the limited-overs sides is far more palatable than the question England will face before the second Test against India at Lord’s, beginning on Aug 9. Stokes will be absent because he is due at Bristol Crown Court, standing trial charged with affray. For all that he is a brilliantly aggressive and instinctive cricketer, the longer the format, the more valuable he is.
When Stokes misses the Lord’s Test, he could be replaced by Sam Curran, who stood in for Stokes in England’s last Test, Moeen, or even Ollie Pope, Surrey’s precocious young batsman.
And so England will have to deal with the absence of Stokes once again. However brilliantly they have done without him in limitedovers cricket, in Tests Stokes will leave a chasm behind.