In the delirious aftermath of the World Cup final in July, Jos Buttler had a quick chat with Michael Vaughan on the Lord’s outfield. The conversation soon turned to the bizarre incident in the final over of normal time, when Martin Guptill’s throw hit Ben Stokes’s bat and raced to the boundary. “That,” whispered Buttler, “was the first thing he middled all day.”
Buttler’s comment was playful and affectionate, yet there was a bit of truth in it. For almost all of that innings, Stokes was frustrated by his inability to time the ball on a difficult pitch. He hit three fours in his first 85 balls, before the situation demanded that he go nuclear. Stokes has oodles of skill, especially with the bat. He is one of the few batsmen who can play every shot in the 20th- and 21st-century batting textbooks. But his true superpower, the thing that has enabled his twin miracles this summer, is his will. He belongs to that rare group of all-action sporting heroes who believe they can climb Everest with a hangover, or save the Ashes by scoring more in a last-wicket partnership than the whole team managed in the first innings.
Stokes did not just bring England back from the dead last Sunday; he brought them back from a cremation. It was an astonishing achievement, euphoric confirmation of his greatness. The relative modesty of Stokes’s numbers in Test cricket – he averages 36 with the bat, 32 with the ball – are sometimes used in evidence against him. But trying to assess his impact through statistics is like trying to quantify love. It should surprise nobody if Stokes gets a pair at Old Trafford. He has always had wild fluctuations in form and has been fighting self‑doubt ever since, at the age of 14, he puked through nerves before his debut for Cumbria.
“I’m going to go through a period of low scores and not got too well,” said Stokes three years ago in his book, Firestarter. “But all of a sudden I know something can just happen for me. I’m not necessarily a form player, more of an in-the-moment player.”
For such a great player, he can be a bit of a klutz. Carlos Brathwaite’s four sixes in the World T20 final will always be part of his story, and his career has been studded with absurd, absent-minded run-outs.
Even at Headingley, he played a hideous shot in the first innings and ran out Buttler in the second. His never-ending bowling spell was partly a penance for that poor stroke. Technically, it was two spells, but in reality it was one, as Stokes had three balls off before returning to the attack when Jofra Archer was injured. In all he bowled 24.2 overs. Analysis from CricViz, who hold the largest database in cricket, show it is the longest spell by a pace bowler in international cricket since 2006.
Stokes’s self-flagellation increased his determination to ensure England would not lose the Ashes, not on his watch. Stokes is allergic to defeat; that, even more than the pursuit of glory, drives him. It was telling that, off the final ball of the World Cup final, when England needed two to win and one to tie, Stokes’s sole thought was to bunt the ball into a gap so that he would get at least one run and ensure England would live to fight another over.
Stokes had some crazy moments of fortune at Lord’s. Whether you make your own luck is debatable but Stokes certainly gives himself the opportunity to get lucky by keeping England in games that would otherwise have been long lost. The Brathwaite experience taught him that if you take a game deep enough, the strangest things can happen. Stokes also knows that, at moments of the highest pressure, something stirs in him: desperation, defiance, a heightened instinct, a bit of genius, and, most of all, an elemental force of personality.
The greater the stakes, the more Stokes wants – needs – to be involved, which is why his career will always lurch between extremes of success and failure. He is a beacon of moral courage. As a bowler he is selectively used but it is indicative that he took the last wickets when England beat Bangladesh by 22 runs in 2016 and India by 31 runs at Edgbaston in 2018.
When the mood takes him, or the situation demands, he will bowl forever. CricViz data shows that in his Test career he has bowled 12 spells of 10 overs or more. The sight of Stokes demonstrably knackered, either while batting or bowling, has become common.
In the biggest moments, Stokes cannot hide his fatigue or his emotions – he could not watch when Jack Leach was batting last Sunday and he was one of the few England players who cried on the field after the World Cup final. He should have a tattoo of a heart on his sleeve.
A big part of Stokes’s appeal is that, in an era of media‑training and image-consciousness, he is authentic, sometimes to a fault. He looks like a fan who has been placed in the body of Ben Stokes for the day. Many great players enjoy their work; Stokes usually looks almost comically careworn. The enjoyment comes after the event, with a primal roar after he blasts the winning runs – just imagine how alive he felt at that moment at Headingley – and then behind closed doors with his mates.
Despite all the emotion, Stokes played with startling clarity in both innings. While most spectators, never mind the players, were unable to think straight, Stokes had a precise gameplan each time. He is like a reverse swan – paddling furiously on the surface, serene under water. In that sense, Stokes is the ideal hero for these melodramatic times. In others, not so much. A judgmental minority, apparently born without the empathy gene, will never forgive or let him forget Bristol, and he is understandably tired of being asked about it. Yet he might reflect that it was a blessing in an extremely good disguise, one that was humbling rather than humiliating.
While the year-long fallout was an experience Stokes probably would not wish on Marlon Samuels, it has accelerated his maturity and changed him almost exclusively for the better. He is much less confrontational, without any obvious impact on his ferocious competitiveness, and has become even more selfless.
Stokes was always an exemplary team man but now his commitment to the collective verges on the obsessive. “Everything he does is for the team,” said Stuart Broad last Sunday. “He is the perfect teammate. He didn’t celebrate his fifty; he didn’t celebrate his hundred. He deserves everything that comes his way because he’s an incredible cricketer and an even better bloke.”
When he was younger, Stokes, like all kids, loved glory. Now his primary, if not sole motivation is a sense of duty – to his teammates, and to the talent he has been given.
Stokes was always the most responsible and technically correct of England’s middle-order buccaneers. When he returned to the side last year, he took that to the point of self-denial. Now he has found a happier medium, one that allows him, in the same innings, to score two off 66 balls and 74 off 42.
Armchair psychoanalysis is a dubious exercise but Bristol does seem to have made Stokes a wiser, warier man. He will never be perfect on or off the field, because that’s not who he is, but he has developed into a different kind of hero – a superstar with no side to him, and with little discernible ego or swagger. One who hunts glory on behalf of his mates and who will volunteer to go to the precipice every single time.