Ben Stokes | King Cricket https://www.kingcricket.co.uk Independent and irreverent cricket writing Mon, 10 Jul 2023 08:57:33 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.3 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-kc_400x400-32x32.png Ben Stokes | King Cricket https://www.kingcricket.co.uk 32 32 Why Stokes and McCullum aren’t worried about bad shots, only bad innings https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/why-stokes-and-mccullum-arent-worried-about-bad-shots-only-bad-innings/2023/07/10/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/why-stokes-and-mccullum-arent-worried-about-bad-shots-only-bad-innings/2023/07/10/#comments Mon, 10 Jul 2023 08:57:31 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=28795 3 minute read Bad shots are bad shots, but in an age when the dumbest moments are endlessly replayed and dissected, it’s important to at least try and take in the bigger picture. A batter who sometimes plays the wrong shot is nowhere near as bad as a batter who’s always worrying about

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3 minute read

Bad shots are bad shots, but in an age when the dumbest moments are endlessly replayed and dissected, it’s important to at least try and take in the bigger picture. A batter who sometimes plays the wrong shot is nowhere near as bad as a batter who’s always worrying about playing the wrong shot.

All the highfalutin talk about Ben Stokes’ England team rewriting Test cricket and boldly startrekking where no cricketers have ever startrekked before rather masks the fact that the biggest gain from their change in attitude has been that it allows for basic everyday competence with the bat.

Incredible pyrotechnic run chases and 500 in a day are great and memorable and all, but erasing the regular sub-100 catastrophes has been every bit as helpful. England were bowled out for double-digit scores five times between the start of 2019 and when Stokes took over as captain in June last year, but not once since. That period also featured 10 team totals between 100 and 150. There have been only two since – one of which was the first innings of Stokes’ first match in charge when some of the side may not yet have arrived on the same page as him.

Two ways batters get out

Many fans and pundits hear Brendon McCullum’s obvious reluctance to criticise batters for numbnuts shots that got them out and they think, “Oh these guys can get away with anything. Someone needs to tell them.”

You know what? Professional batters who get out to numbnuts shots don’t generally need to be told. They were batting and then they had to stop batting and the thing that brought about that change was a numbnuts thing they did. If your job is being great at batting, you’ll most likely notice a detail like that. You may even dwell on it to an unhealthy extent.

That is only one way batters get out though. Another way batters get out is they half-play a shot they aren’t entirely sure about. Half-played indecisive shots don’t tend to make good, clean contact with 90mph deliveries arcing through the air and/or skewing a degree or two off the pitch.

Furthermore, you don’t actually need to be caught very precisely midway between two different shot options to miss or mishit something. You can be 60, 70, 80 or 90% sure you’re doing the right thing and that niggling, self-sabotaging doubt can still be the difference between scoring runs and your dismissal.

We would guess that in Test cricket this way of getting out is more common than losing your wicket to a stupid shot.

Stupid shots v indecisiveness

England’s attitude at the minute is that bad shots are only dangerous when you play them, but doubt is dangerous all the time. The captain and coach therefore try and counter what they see as the bigger threat.

When you question a batter’s judgement in one specific instance, you almost certainly create a very small bit of doubt in them about every other instance. So they pretty much do not do that.

They say this instead: Whatever you want to do, just do it. Don’t think twice, just react. We won’t criticise you afterwards unless you were anything other than wholehearted going for whatever shot you chose.

They try to feed conviction.

International batters will almost certainly internalise truly bad decisions automatically. It’s also worth pointing out that the skilful ones will massively improve the percentages on what wouldn’t ordinarily be considered a ‘percentage shot’ by playing it with total certainty.

There’s no point painting this no-real-recriminations philosophy as a cure-all, because clearly it isn’t. It has however been a means of attaining some basic batting competence most of the time. In Test cricket, where every single decision is questioned by onlookers, that is a much harder thing to maintain than you might think.

> Why the word ‘Bazball’ is not helping any of us

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Why the word ‘Bazball’ is not helping any of us https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/why-the-word-bazball-is-not-helping-any-of-us/2023/07/05/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/why-the-word-bazball-is-not-helping-any-of-us/2023/07/05/#comments Wed, 05 Jul 2023 21:58:48 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=28774 3 minute read Bazball is a completely annoying word because any time it’s used – which is basically every other sentence in this Ashes – everybody is talking at cross purposes. The foundations for this ongoing noisy surround sound argument lie in the fact that almost no-one knows or acknowledges the definition that

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3 minute read

Bazball is a completely annoying word because any time it’s used – which is basically every other sentence in this Ashes – everybody is talking at cross purposes.

The foundations for this ongoing noisy surround sound argument lie in the fact that almost no-one knows or acknowledges the definition that Cricinfo UK editor Andrew Miller had in mind when he coined the word. Miller seems to have meant a stripped back, unencumbered mindset – essentially, ‘see ball, react to ball’.

Most people have however developed a narrower understanding – typically that it’s somehow all about trying to welly boundaries.

This is sort of understandable because an in-the-moment frame of mind probably does result in more shotmaking from the majority of players. But this doesn’t make slogging and Bazball synonyms. If a batter is shorn of outside pressures and preconceptions, they should in theory end up left with that trite old method, ‘playing each ball on its merits’.

It’s clear from the last year or so that a lot of England batters haven’t been seeing much merit in a lot of deliveries. That end result is much easier to see and understand than how it comes about.

In match commentary, ‘Bazball’ has therefore often come to be used as shorthand for attacking batting, in the same way that in recent years fours and sixes have often been hailed as ‘T20 cricket’, as if no-one hit a boundary before 2003.

That sort of usage makes the word misleadingly narrow and it means whenever anyone uses ‘Bazball’ to describe something more complex, at least half the people hearing or reading undertstand an entirely different meaning from the one intended.

As Brendon McCullum himself said recently: “I don’t have any idea what ‘Bazball’ is. It’s not just all crash and burn if you look at the approach – and that’s why I don’t really like that silly term that people are throwing out there.

“Because there’s actually quite a bit of thought that goes into how the guys manufacture their performances and when they put pressure on bowlers and which bowlers they put pressure on. There’s also times where they’ve absorbed pressure beautifully as well.”

The other reason why Bazball is such a dumb thing to argue about is because the word isn’t just used too narrowly; it’s used too broadly as well.

Its omnipresence as a label has made it possible to hang any part of the England team’s approach off it. It’s not just the batting; literally every single thing Ben Stokes or Brendon McCullum ever says has also become ‘Bazball’. It’s expanded into this great big basket of ideas about cricket – many essentially unrelated – all of which are attributed to some central guiding principle that can only ever be divined through the squaring of multiple circles. The end result is a nebulous and ungraspable concept, at which point people start filling the semantic void with whatever the hell they feel like.

What’s Bazball about? Fearlessness? Clarity of thought? Alleviating pressure? Playing with conviction? What else could we throw into the mix? Relentless positivity maybe? Lack of recriminations? Entertainment at all costs and total disregard for results? Is it about calculated aggression or all-out aggression? Is it about picking five mid-pace right-armers and asking them to bowl half-trackers for two-thirds of a day?

Maybe it’s some of these things. Maybe it’s none of them. It depends who you ask. And when.

Bazball is a weird, collectively built straw man that everyone sees from a different angle. Let’s talk about the details we can agree upon and accept that there’s nothing to be gained from discussing the whole.

> Know your Bazball – an illustrated guide

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Ben Stokes’ 155 v Ben Stokes’ captaincy – which was more irregular? https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/ben-stokes-155-v-ben-stokes-captaincy-which-was-more-irregular/2023/07/02/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/ben-stokes-155-v-ben-stokes-captaincy-which-was-more-irregular/2023/07/02/#comments Sun, 02 Jul 2023 21:35:08 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=28762 2 minute read Ben Stokes’ incredible attempt to play a twice-in-a-lifetime innings has tragically overshadowed the Lord’s Test’s most extraordinary passage of play: England spending two-thirds of a day bowling nothing but 80mph bouncers and it somehow working out for them. Forget day five. We’ve all seen a Stokes special before and everyone

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2 minute read

Ben Stokes’ incredible attempt to play a twice-in-a-lifetime innings has tragically overshadowed the Lord’s Test’s most extraordinary passage of play: England spending two-thirds of a day bowling nothing but 80mph bouncers and it somehow working out for them.

Forget day five. We’ve all seen a Stokes special before and everyone already knows that most modern batters don’t feel all that strongly about staying in their ground – nothing new about that. No, looking back at the second Ashes Test as a whole, day four was the real weirdo.

We can only presume that England hit upon their bowling plan in an ambitious bid to mitigate the criticism they’d been attracting for losing so many wickets to the short ball themselves.

The results enabled a kind of: “See! See! It wasn’t just us losing wickets to the short ball! Australia did too! Okay, bowling 95% short balls for 50 overs in a row did make wickets to the short ball fractionally more likely – but still!”

What was so spectacular about this stretch of the game is that the above reads like comedic exaggeration when it is in fact an underrepresentation of reality. The truth is England bowled 98% short balls for 51 overs in a row.

That’s an actual statistic. England’s approach was so extreme it was literally beyond rhetoric.

That is about the most pig-headed commitment to a strange and narrow tactic you’re ever likely to see from a whole team.

Even more remarkably, England didn’t really have any bowlers particularly well suited to bowling short, but they did it anyway. They did it with every single bowler they used for hours on end. And it worked. Truly the spirit of The Great Neil Wagner was with them. Maybe it was just another example of how willpower is finite with batter after batter slowly losing the ability to restrain themselves any longer.

England still lost the match of course – in many different ways and places. The happy hooking in the first innings drew a lot of the brickbats, but ineffectually spudgunning their way through the first day didn’t help. Australia were at one point 316-3 which is not a position of strength if you’ve elected to bowl. Stokes’ 155 basically came when England had already left themselves needing a slightly-too-big miracle.

They also conceded 44 in no-balls and byes and lost by 43. We’re not suggesting they could have eliminated these extras and won. It’s just an illustration of the kind of unspectacular sloppiness that afflicts many parts of their play. (There were of course a bunch of wides too.) Promising positions slip, unexpected opportunities go underexploited. They’re an intimidating side in some ways, but not in the oppressive, smothering, machine-like way that great teams are intimidating.

Another great match. Another blinding Ben Stokes innings. Another Ashes defeat.

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You can ignore Ollie Robinson – England probably won’t “go harder” in the second Test https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/you-can-ignore-ollie-robinson-england-probably-wont-go-harder-in-the-second-test/2023/06/27/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/you-can-ignore-ollie-robinson-england-probably-wont-go-harder-in-the-second-test/2023/06/27/#comments Tue, 27 Jun 2023 14:24:29 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=28729 4 minute read We still don’t feel like we know Ollie Robinson all that well, but one thing we’ve concluded is that he is now pretty well established as England’s talker-of-bollocks in chief. Robinson somehow made the headlines last week for a tetchy and sweary outburst at Usman Khawaja after dismissing him for

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4 minute read

We still don’t feel like we know Ollie Robinson all that well, but one thing we’ve concluded is that he is now pretty well established as England’s talker-of-bollocks in chief.

Robinson somehow made the headlines last week for a tetchy and sweary outburst at Usman Khawaja after dismissing him for 141 basically-match-winning runs.

It seemed to us to be fairly run-of-the-mill, heat-of-the-moment fast bowler fare. Presumably somewhat more considered was Robinson’s subsequent Wisden column, in which he bemoaned victorious Australia for their supposed unwillingness, “to go toe-to-toe with us”.

After repeating a whole series of “for your ears only” tyre-inflation comments from Brendon McCullum, Robinson then closed out his column by very uncomfortably promising: “One thing I can guarantee. You’re going to see us come harder and harder.”

We’re not sure what to make of that guarantee, given he had opted for the conditional just a couple of paragraphs earlier, suggesting that, “you could see us come even harder at Lord’s.”

Maybe he talked himself into it. Ollie Robinson can certainly talk himself into a lot of things.

Will England really “go harder”?

Against a backdrop of Test cricket through the ages, England’s win over South Africa at Old Trafford last year was unremarkable. But in the smaller sample of matches played in the Stokes-McCullum era, it is actually in some ways the most remarkable.

That game didn’t deliver the gut-rotting tension of the first Ashes Test and it didn’t serve up a jaw-dropping run-chase like those Jonny Bairstow began to perfect last summer. It is therefore remarkable in the same way that The Straight Story is a remarkable David Lynch film – because it was characterised by such a conspicuous lack of weirdness.

“We’re trying to rewrite how Test cricket is being played in England,” Ben Stokes had said before that South Africa series began, only for his team to succumb to an innings defeat in the first Test. That didn’t feel like much of a rewrite. It felt like a very familiar repeat.

In the second Test, Stokes’ men attempted to keep the unambiguous mindset but seemingly allowed themselves to bend to circumstance a little more. The end result was that they showed themselves to be quite capable of refraining from constant hell-for-leather attack in favour of pragmatism.

After bowling South Africa out for 151, Zak Crawley came out and made 38 off 101 balls. When he was out, England were 147-5. Rather than madly dash to a 50-run lead – which is what people assume they’d try and do now – Bens Stokes and Foakes sedately and unshowily worked their way to centuries.

Foakes’ 206-ball hundred was characteristically steady, but the captain also took it pretty easy having spent the rest of summer dealing in leading-by-example slog cameos. After 98 balls, he was on 41 and he hadn’t accelerated enormously by the time he was out for 103 off 163 balls. An England declaration ensued – but only once they were 264 ahead. There were dramatic moments, but all in all, intrigue outweighed excitement.

The point is that for all the talk about England’s recent approach to Test cricket, they are actually perfectly capable of flexing in the non-American sense.

So why are they so unwilling to do so?

Wrong question

The real question is why do England sound so unwilling to temper their approach. It’s probably because after two defeats in their last three Tests, Stokes and McCullum feel like the players are under enough pressure to alter their method anyway.

Maybe the leadership duo are trying to counter those forces – not because they disagree, but simply because they don’t want the players to stray too far from central principles that have honestly completely transformed the side from when they inherited it.

Ollie Robinson is a key part of England’s team, but he is also a tool of the system. As such, bombastic ‘we’re going to attack even more’ style comments like his probably betray not so much a genuine goal as Stokes’ and McCullum’s ongoing messaging efforts.

Attacking cricket isn’t a cure-all, but erring on the side of positivity has unquestionably worked for England over the last year or so. They’ve shown signs they can moderate their aggression, but they won’t want to do so to the extent they reacquaint themselves with their greatest enemy.

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Why do we complain about declarations? Maybe because declarations feel easier to quantify https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/why-do-we-complain-about-declarations-maybe-because-declarations-feel-easier-to-quantify/2023/06/22/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/why-do-we-complain-about-declarations-maybe-because-declarations-feel-easier-to-quantify/2023/06/22/#comments Thu, 22 Jun 2023 08:51:50 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=28708 4 minute read Few declarations pass without public complaint, but Ben Stokes’ first innings declaration in the first Test of the 2023 Ashes was more controversial than most. People complained when it happened and then they really complained when England lost. England were 393-8, Joe Root was on 118 and Nathan Lyon had

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4 minute read

Few declarations pass without public complaint, but Ben Stokes’ first innings declaration in the first Test of the 2023 Ashes was more controversial than most. People complained when it happened and then they really complained when England lost.

England were 393-8, Joe Root was on 118 and Nathan Lyon had just conceded 20 in an over. There were two overs to go until the second new ball became available.

And Stokes declared.

Any assessment of what might have happened had Stokes not declared is purely hypothetical, but it certainly felt like England would have scored a few more runs.

Batters are most vulnerable in the first few balls after coming out though and England’s captain saw this as an opportunity to have two such goes at Australia’s openers: four overs that night and then again with an as-good-as-new ball the following morning.

On Test Match Special, Michael Vaughan stated almost as a fact that England would have scored “30 or 40 runs” for those last two wickets. We can’t know that. They might only have scored 10, or Ollie Robinson and James Anderson could have been dismissed off the next two balls.

Stokes’ declaration was a gamble. England didn’t take a wicket in those four overs so it didn’t pay off, but we don’t actually know how much the gamble cost.

Hindsight says that given England didn’t take a wicket, they should have batted on. But then hindsight could also say that given Usman Khawaja ultimately made 141 and bowling at him with the new ball after a full day in the field represented the best opportunity to get him out, maybe Ben Stokes should have declared sooner.

Other “wrong” decisions

Although the outcome of a Test match is decided mathematically, scorecards are not mathematical formulae. You can’t look at them after the fact and plug in different numbers to get a different result. Games are steered by the decisions the players make and each decision takes the match down a different road.

Declaring eight wickets down to give yourself four overs at the opposition before the close of play takes the match one way. Batting on and making a few more runs takes it a different way.

What people sometimes overlook is that this goes for every decision. And you know what? An awful lot of decisions are made over the course of a five-day Test match. Like an absolutely crazy, uncountable number.

A lot of the “wrong” decisions that you don’t notice are also way more significant than the timing of a declaration. We can all spot a shit shot, but even a single instead of a two means a different batter on strike and a whole different timeline. Missing out on that run might actually save a batter bizarrely.

More obviously, just think about some of the decisions that came immediately after that declaration. Stokes gave those four overs to Stuart Broad and Ollie Robinson.

To some people, Stokes declaring with only eight wickets down lost England the Test. However, it feels just as significant to us that Stokes spurned James Anderson that evening.

Indulging in simpleton maths on that scorecard we could argue that Usman Khawaja lbw Anderson for 0 would have been worth way way more than a handful of Joe Root slogs in the two remaining overs before Robinson and Anderson got cleaned up by the new ball. What a terrible decision, what moronic captaincy, what did he think he was doing?

Or maybe Jimmy wouldn’t have wheedled out Khawaja in those 12 balls. But that doesn’t mean the same hypotheticals don’t also apply for every single bowling change from then on – and there were many.

Every change in tactic matters, every minor field change could potentially swing the game – it’s just much, much harder to get a sense of what these decisions are worth. It’s not just a run saved here or conceded there; it’s wickets and emotions and – dare we say it – momentum.

It’s not that Stokes’ declaration gamble didn’t matter; it’s that it was just one of a great many probably-worth-about-30-runs decisions that were made one way or another by various players throughout the course of the match. To pick out that one as being some kind of out-and-out stinker overlooks that. (It also overlooks the huge benefits had the plan actually worked – which it could have.)

Yes, Stokes’ first innings declaration decided the match. But so did everything else.

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IPL innovations: is Ben Stokes planning on double-batting it? https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/ipl-innovations-is-ben-stokes-planning-on-double-batting-it/2023/03/30/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/ipl-innovations-is-ben-stokes-planning-on-double-batting-it/2023/03/30/#comments Thu, 30 Mar 2023 11:06:59 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=28356 2 minute read The Impact Player substitution thing suggests that the IPL has been reduced to rehashing old ideas in its search for eye-catching innovations/gimmicks. How about being a little more creative? How about letting batters use two bats? When we saw the shot of Ben Stokes above, we immediately thought of a

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2 minute read

The Impact Player substitution thing suggests that the IPL has been reduced to rehashing old ideas in its search for eye-catching innovations/gimmicks. How about being a little more creative? How about letting batters use two bats?

When we saw the shot of Ben Stokes above, we immediately thought of a court story we heard recently about a wedding near our home town which had descended into an insanely violent mass brawl.

There are two reasons why we thought of this:

  1. At least nine of the men sentenced were called Stokes
  2. One guy was apparently wielding two fire extinguishers as if they were nunchuks

When it comes to wielding a cricket bat (or a fire extinguisher for that matter), we’d argue that two hands are better than one. That didn’t dissuade Moeen Ali from going for a top-spin forehand against South Africa last month though.

The logical next step is to equip a second bat for extra damage. What else are you going to use that spare hand for? A shield? A torch? A spade?

We were therefore excited to see what Stokes would be able to do with two bats. Somewhat disappointingly, what he was able to do was ‘drop one of the bats behind the stumps before taking strike two-handed’.

Nevertheless, his move does at least conjure notions of a special slogging bat primed for deployment. You may or may not remember the purest example of such a bat, the Mongoose, which was occasionally used by Matthew Hayden in the 2010 IPL and far more memorably by Dwayne Smith while dressed as a cowboy.

Back in those days, batters very rarely began their innings using a Mongoose. They instead summoned it when they felt it was time to deploy the long handle (an apt phrase because that was the bat’s defining feature – less blade, more handle).

We always imagined them calling out, “Bring Forth The Mongoose,” in a booming Brian Blessed voice at such times.

The IPL starts tomorrow.

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From the 2019 Ashes to two World Cup finals – which of Ben Stokes’ big three high pressure run-chase innings was the most ridiculous? https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/from-the-2019-ashes-to-two-world-cup-finals-which-of-ben-stokes-big-three-high-pressure-run-chase-innings-was-the-most-ridiculous/2023/03/22/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/from-the-2019-ashes-to-two-world-cup-finals-which-of-ben-stokes-big-three-high-pressure-run-chase-innings-was-the-most-ridiculous/2023/03/22/#comments Wed, 22 Mar 2023 09:18:16 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=27792 10 minute read With his thin hair and love of whole milk, you could easily mistake Ben Stokes for a baby. But Ben Stokes is not a baby. Ben Stokes is a full grown adult man who plays cricket for a living. He plays it very well with a particular penchant for seeing

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10 minute read

With his thin hair and love of whole milk, you could easily mistake Ben Stokes for a baby. But Ben Stokes is not a baby. Ben Stokes is a full grown adult man who plays cricket for a living. He plays it very well with a particular penchant for seeing out high pressure run chases.

If you can’t immediately work it out, the three Ben Stokes innings we’re looking at here are…

  • 84 not out in the 50-over World Cup final v New Zealand, July 2019
  • 135 not out in the 3rd Ashes Test v Australia, August 2019
  • 52 not out in the T20 World Cup final v Pakistan, November 2022

Three unbeaten innings in run-chases, one in each format and all three incredibly ridiculous.

But which was the most ridiculous? And why are we even including the T20 World Cup final when it’s clearly not that one?

The criteria

We like to approach these things methodically and we also like to give numeric scores so that at the end we can sidestep all nuance and give a firm answer.

We will be rating Ben Stokes’ big three high pressure run-chase innings according to the Seven Aspects of Cricket Run-Chase Ridiculousness, as outlined by Jayasinghe, Farooqi, Laghari and Saltaformaggio in their seminal 2006 paper, Did You See That? Did You See What He/She Did? That Was Fully Nuts! How Ridiculous Was That?

The seven aspects are as follows:

  1. Intensity of pressure
  2. Duration of pressure
  3. Rarity
  4. What was at stake
  5. Improbability
  6. Jeopardy
  7. Comedy

Rather than sticking with chronology, let’s instead rate the three innings in format order – that way we get the T20 one out of the way early.

T20: 52 not out off 49 balls v Pakistan in the 2022 World Cup final

INTENSITY OF PRESSURE: As Jayasinghe, Farooqi, Laghari and Saltaformaggio concede, this is always a hard one to score because pressure isn’t a constant; it builds and dissipates according to events. You can however counteract this to a degree by writing an article so long that people don’t especially want you to go into any great detail which will give you room to fudge your conclusion a bit.

It was quite obvious for most of Stokes’ innings that the T20 World Cup final was going to be a low-scoring game. This meant an ordinarily manageable run-chase seemed much more difficult and that increased the pressure on Stokes. Secondly, it was a World Cup final, which is a pretty big thing. Thirdly, thanks to his reputation, Stokes played much of his innings as The Guy Who’s Going To Win This For Us, which is a pressure in itself. Set against that, England never got themselves into too big a hole and that suppressed heartbeats a certain amount.

Rating: 8

DURATION OF PRESSURE: Easy one this. Brevity is T20’s greatest strength as a format, but also its greatest weakness when it comes to the real, stomach-churning, this-could-be-amazing-or-awful-and-I-don’t-know-which passages of play when sport is at its most intense. At 49 balls and 1h21m, this was a fairly short cricket innings and obviously not all of it was played at peak pressure either.

Rating: 2

RARITY: You don’t play in a T20 World Cup final every day. Set against that, Ben Stokes had played in one before. And there had also been a T20 World Cup final 12 months earlier.

Rating: 7

AT STAKE: A T20 World Cup and also that old classic “redemption” in the eyes of headline writers after getting nailed for four successive sixes by Carlos Brathwaite in the final over of the 2016 final. The T20 World Cup is very much the lesser World Cup though, if only due to frequency. Plus England had won it before (in 2010) so it wasn’t quite as big a deal.

Rating: 7

IMPROBABILITY: Low-scoring game, pressure of a final and everything, but we’d almost be tempted to slot this effort down on the ‘probable’ side of the probable/improbable divide. The required run-rate was only about 6.5 an over when he came in, which is no big thing in T20, and it never got much above 8 an over with plenty of wickets remaining.

Rating: 3

JEOPARDY: Jeopardy is so important. Jeopardy is the fragility of the situation. The more it feels like all you have could disappear in an instant, the more alive you feel. A lot of the jeopardy in this innings arose from the unprovable and very probably wrong sense that, ‘if Stokes doesn’t do this, no-one will’. The truth is England only lost five of their 10 wickets. Things were never really that fragile.

Rating: 4

COMEDY: It’s important to emphasise that we’re rating ridiculousness here and comedy is a fundamental part of that. (One-seventh of it, actually.) All the bonkers, unexpected things that happen over the course of an innings – all the mishits, dropped chances and near-run-outs – they all add to the ridiculousness of that knock. Let’s be honest though: Stokes’ T20 World Cup final innings wasn’t a particularly funny one. There was a trio of deliveries from Naseem Shah where he may as well have not been there and a duff-plopped almost-chance towards long-off, but not much else. The funniest thing that happened was probably just him being there. Chasing them down. Again.

Rating: 1.5

TOTAL: 32.5

ODI: 84 not out off 98 balls v New Zealand in the 2019 World Cup final

INTENSITY OF PRESSURE: New Zealand had made 241. Ben Stokes came to the crease in the 20th over and by the end of the 25th – halfway through the chase – England were 93-4, needing roughly a run-a-ball. That’s a pretty high pressure situation anyway, but that was just the starting point. From there the required rate continually bubbled up, peaking at 15 needed for an outright win off the final over. The last five overs of the innings played out with the required rate in excess off nine an over and Stokes’s presence at the crease very obviously vital for his team to have any chance of success. It’s worth pointing out as well that England had never won the 50-over World Cup.

Rating: 10

DURATION OF PRESSURE: If 98 balls doesn’t sound colossal, 2h27m maybe presents the effort a little more clearly. We would also argue that Stokes was under significant (and escalating) pressure, pretty much from start to finish. Short of a team suffering an even bigger and even more rapid clatter of early wickets, it’s hard to envisage a more protracted period of pressure for an innings played in a one-day international.

Rating: 9

RARITY: The 50-over World Cup is once every four years. England had never won it.

Rating: 10

AT STAKE: The 50-over World Cup, which England had never won.

Rating: 10

IMPROBABILITY: Improbability is not just a measure taken at the outset of an innings. It can also climb based on developments. We would also argue that it is almost the sum of all those moments because every scenario must be overcome.

Chasing 242 to win, England’s score was variously:

  • 93 with 25 overs to go
  • 208 with three overs to go
  • 220 with nine balls to go
  • 227 with four balls to go

At each of those points, victory (or at least parity) was possible rather than probable. The rating reflects that protracted unlikeliness.

Rating: 9

JEOPARDY: Given the scenarios outlined in the previous section, England needed either Stokes or Jos Buttler or ideally both at the crease to stand a chance of matching New Zealand’s score. From the start of the 24th over to the 45th over, a wicket would have removed one of them from the equation. That was when Buttler was dismissed and from then on, realistically, it was all on Stokes. He could not get out. That is a very fragile situation and so very high jeopardy.

Rating: 10

COMEDY: At one point in this innings, Ben Stokes played a diving blind shot for a cumulative six. That alone would put it in the top percentile of comedy knocks – but then just think about the climax. The end of England’s run-chase was one of the purest examples of how cricket can be much, much funnier than any other sport thanks to its dense labyrinth of confusing rules.

These are the bare facts: England needed 22 off nine balls. Two of those nine were dot balls, three resulted in wickets and three were sixes. One of the sixes was caught by Trent Boult while he was straddling the boundary. Stokes took a run off each of the final two deliveries and both resulted in run-outs.

Rating: 11 (Spinal Tap value because this is pretty much the benchmark for comedy one-day innings.)

TOTAL: 69

Test: 135 not out v Australia in the 2019 Ashes

INTENSITY OF PRESSURE: The only thing that really tempered the intensity of the match situations Stokes faced at Headingley in 2019 was hopelessness; the forlorn sense that this was already out of his and England’s reach and so there really wasn’t much he should worry about. But you can’t go from there to winning a match without passing through the intervening levels of pressure – and even by undertaking such a journey, you kind of raise the pressure anyway. The blunt truth is that Ben Stokes put himself in positions where victory or defeat in an Ashes Test that most England fans had previously given up on was entirely in his hands. People really, really want to see things like that happen and that fact brings additional pressure.

Rating: 10

DURATION OF PRESSURE: It was a 219-ball innings that lasted five-and-a-half-hours. There was pressure throughout and significant pressure the majority of the time.

Rating: 10

RARITY: Ashes series are every couple of years and there are five Tests in a series, so in that sense this wasn’t that rare a thing. Match situations like this, however, are incredibly rare. Combine the two and you’ve got your rarity score. (We do however have to subtract one point for not being the first against-all-odds Ashes turnaround at Headingley.)

Rating: 9

AT STAKE: An Australia win and they would have retained the Ashes. The Ashes comes around more frequently than the World Cup and England have won a whole bunch of times. But that isn’t the full story. The true measure of this innings is the hope it magicked into existence; the innards-twisting, delighted disbelief that something amazing could happen; and the desperate, desperate, desperate need for that not to be thrown away. That was what was really at stake.

It’s about investments. Any England supporter who invested in this match when Stokes was making two runs in 50 balls the night before saw that investment mushroom into something sizeable the following day when it became plausible that England could actually do this. When the home team subsequently careered deep into implausibility before boomeranging back again, that investment became unquantifiable.

Stokes made three runs off 72 balls in this innings before he hit a boundary – not just an investment, but an investment against the odds. And he kept adding to that investment. By fighting back from a dire first innings and several all-but-hopeless situations during the run-chase, he ensured that something else was at stake at the finish: that wonderful, childish idea that, ‘it ain’t over til it’s over’.

Rating: 10

IMPROBABILITY: England have delivered some mad Test run chases since, but it’s worth revisiting the context of this one because it is, quite simply, unmatchable. They were chasing 359 in their second innings having been bowled out for 67 in their first one. Also, just by the way, they had never actually chased 359 in the fourth innings before.

From there, things got distinctly less probable. While Stokes came in with the score a moderately healthy 141-3, he was also there when it became 286-9. This moment is worth emphasising. If you need 73 to win and number 11’s at the crease, it’s fair to consider victory pretty damn improbable. What really elevates this innings above the 2019 World Cup final effort is that distinction. There were points when even the merest whiff of possibility was hard to discern.

Rating: 10

JEOPARDY: England’s chances were pretty deeply intwined with the fate of Ben Stokes from early on: if he’d got out, their chances would have dimished enormously. But then we got to nine wickets down, where if either Stokes or Jack Leach had got out, England’s chances wouldn’t have just diminished, they’d have gone. Completely gone.

And then they stayed at that point for 10 overs with everyone’s emotional investment growing throughout. Every ball, it could have been all over. Every single ball. A full hour where an impossibly rare opportunity for the most memorable victory was entirely at stake and completely at risk, every… single… ball.

The purest example of the level of jeopardy was the BBC commentary we used to begin another of our features: What Ben Stokes, Jack Leach and Headingley 2019 tell us about Test cricket. “It’s six or out… It’s six,” said Jonathan Agnew. With the ball in the air, there were just two possible outcomes: six vital runs or complete failure.

But even this moment overlooks the most vital element of jeopardy – fallibility. It is one thing for the fate of a match to entirely hinge on Ben Stokes not getting out in the next hour. It is quite another for the same thing to entirely hinge on Jack Leach not getting out. That level of fragility – to have the whole outcome of a game in the hands of the very person deemed least qualified to handle the situation – is why cricket can at times be the most exciting sport of all.

We never said these ratings were out of 10.

Rating: 20

COMEDY: Headingley 2019 can’t in all honesty match the 2019 World Cup final in this sphere, but that isn’t to say it doesn’t have solid comedy credentials all the same. Getting out to a shit shot for eight in the first innings and then doing this in the second innings is pretty damn funny. Making three runs off 72 balls and then 132 off 147 balls is pretty damn funny. Six or out is pretty damn funny. A 76-run partnership in which Leach contributed a single run is pretty damn funny.

What else? Nathan Lyon missing a run-out with two needed for the win: very funny. An LBW appeal a ball later that would have been given if Australia had any reviews left: very, very funny. Hell, take a step back and the sheer gall of going out and delivering this run chase is pretty damn funny in itself.

Rating: 10

TOTAL: 79

Results

  1. Headingley Test: 79
  2. 2019 World Cup final: 69
  3. 2022 T20 World Cup final: 32.5

Ben Stokes’ monstrously ludicrous and protracted 135 not out in the 3rd Ashes Test v Australia in August 2019 was the most ridiculous of his big three high pressure run-chase innings.

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Ben Stokes: Lord Megachief of Gold 2022 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/ben-stokes-lord-megachief-of-gold-2022/2023/01/05/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/ben-stokes-lord-megachief-of-gold-2022/2023/01/05/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2023 10:45:53 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=28008 6 minute read Our annual Lord Megachief of Gold award is the highest honour in cricket. The title is recognition of performance over the previous calendar year. Here are all the winners. Up until now we’ve always recognised players for their batting or their bowling or both. This year, something else has swayed

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6 minute read

Our annual Lord Megachief of Gold award is the highest honour in cricket. The title is recognition of performance over the previous calendar year. Here are all the winners.

Up until now we’ve always recognised players for their batting or their bowling or both. This year, something else has swayed us.

This is a bit tough on Babar Azam, who couldn’t have done a great deal more. Four Test hundreds and an average of 69.64; three ODI hundreds and an average of 84.87; and a T20 hundred too.

But Babar was also the losing captain in a T20 World Cup final and for a three-Test series at home against England.

Lord Megachief of Gold

Ben Stokes then. A man who can bat, bowl and take 82 per cent amazing catches, but who has achieved the highest honour in cricket this year for precisely none of those things. He is instead being named Lord Megachief of Gold for captaincy, or rather for taking a sad, dead bird’s carcass and restoring it to life with a couple of bonus superpowers for good measure.

We may as well recap the playing contributions first though. There was a hundred in the Caribbean and then a 173-run partnership with Ben Foakes against South Africa that turned 147-5 into an innings victory when England were one Test down.

While there was nothing too remarkable with the ball, he did keep his Test averages the right way round across the calendar year – 870 runs at 36.25 versus 26 wickets at 31.19.

Oh and he was also the top scorer in a T20 World Cup final. If we’re saying he only had an okay year, it was the very top end of only okay.

And now to the other stuff.

Captaincy

An awful lot has been written about exactly what England have done since Ben Stokes became captain. But you actually can’t really gauge that properly without first revisiting what the team had become leading up to his tenure.

This year’s achievements are one thing. What’s more remarkable is that they didn’t arise from a baseline of competence. England have leapfrogged adequacy, hopping from deathly underperformance straight to rewriting what may or not be possible. Even if we discover more of this side’s limits and frailties in the coming year – and we surely will – that transformation did happen. It’s not really about the team’s ‘feats’. It’s about wresting the team from awfulness and instantly flinging them at least some distance in the opposite direction.

We spent the first half of 2022 angry with the England Test team and the second half amazed with it. Angry to amazed with just a change of captain (and coach).

So before we get to Stokes’ 10 Tests in charge (nine wins), let’s first look at the previous 10 (one win).

Right-arm fast-medium and batting collapses

The pre-Stokes captaincy period we’re looking at here comprises a win and then a loss against India, four defeats and a draw in the Ashes, and then two draws and a defeat in the West Indies.

Those are the basic results, but let’s recall how they came about as well. The two main themes were batting collapses and wilfully samey and unexciting bowling attacks.

The second Test of this period, a 157-run loss to India at the Oval, was a fine example. With the ball, England went with James Anderson, Ollie Robinson, Chris Woakes and Craig Overton – all right-arm fast-medium seamers – plus Moeen Ali. With the bat, they fell to 62-5 in their first innings.

The next Test was the first of the Ashes and to mark the occasion they went two runs better, collapsing to 60-5 on day one. They then went into the second Test with no fewer than five right-arm fast-medium bowlers and no spinner. They managed a whopping 85 runs before the fall of the fifth wicket in their second innings, which started to feel like a high water mark when they were bowled out for 68 in the third Test.

By this point, England looked burned-out, mediocre and sick of cricket, yet somehow they saved the fourth Test, even after being 36-4. They also picked a spinner – which wasn’t the case for the fifth Test. They were 85-5 in the first innings of that one and all out for 124 in the second.

And then it was on to the West Indies, where any tiny shreds of joy and goodwill were incinerated with the dropping of James Anderson and Stuart Broad in a myopic bid to engineer something that looked like a fresh start. Draws in the first two Tests were followed by a match in which they fell to 67-7 in the first innings and 97-7 in the second.

That’s where they were when Ben Stokes was named Test captain.

The Stokes era

England won their next four Tests. And how.

Having been just about the collapsiest team in Test history, they chased over 250 four times in a row while scoring at about five runs an over. Jonny Bairstow’s innings against New Zealand at Trent Bridge in particular was a truly incredible thing.

While these feats could partly be ascribed to a slightly duff batch of balls, it was pretty obvious that the team was also now being run in a very different way.

Anderson and Broad were not just back but embiggened. Jack Leach was given a full-time job too instead of the shaky zero hours contract he had been on. Leach wouldn’t be omitted from the team again all year – a vote of confidence in him but also in spin bowling more generally. Stokes would show similar faith in Rehan Ahmed later in the year, even going so far as to bat him at three when he felt the wind was at the teenager’s back.

It’s unkind to do a Captain Stokes v Captain Root head-to-head, but things were unarguably cheerier too. Players felt wanted, supported and secure. Stokes didn’t just say he thought a player was great before leaving them out of the next game. For the most part he tended to stick with them.

He also demonstrated that he would support positive batting in the face of any mistakes by going completely overboard and making boatloads of batting mistakes himself. His often irresponsible approach was leadership by example. He knew that no-one was going to deliberately copy his errors. It was a self-sacrificial attempt to raise the ceiling of what was permissible under his captaincy. He figured that even if the change in mentality brought a few more misguided slogs, it would eradicate a greater number of equally suicidal uncertain prods. As that Bairstow innings and 500 in a day proved, more can be achieved by batting with freedom and conviction than by second-guessing yourself and trying to avoid doing the wrong thing.

Stokes’ one defeat as captain came in the first Test against South Africa. However, his team responded with an innings victory and then a nine wicket win before positively rollocking their way through three Tests in Pakistan. They won them all, despite not having played Test cricket there since Rehan Ahmed was in nappies.

This year may or may not see the same success, but that’s not really the point. The point is this: Immediately before Ben Stokes became captain, following the England Test team was incredibly unfun. Since he became captain – regardless of results – it has been incredibly fun.

Congratulations, Ben Stokes, you are 2022’s Lord Megachief of Gold.

Lord Megachiefs of Gold

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Five talking points after England’s fourth-ever Test win in Pakistan (and second in a fortnight) https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/five-talking-points-after-englands-fourth-ever-test-win-in-pakistan-and-second-in-a-fortnight/2022/12/12/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/five-talking-points-after-englands-fourth-ever-test-win-in-pakistan-and-second-in-a-fortnight/2022/12/12/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2022 11:56:26 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=27939 5 minute read The second Test was “a differently played game” according to Ben Stokes. It still resulted in England winning in Pakistan though, which is not a thing that had happened too often until this month. The match has left us with quite a few half-baked thoughts rolling around our largely empty

The post Five talking points after England’s fourth-ever Test win in Pakistan (and second in a fortnight) first appeared on King Cricket. ]]>

5 minute read

The second Test was “a differently played game” according to Ben Stokes. It still resulted in England winning in Pakistan though, which is not a thing that had happened too often until this month.

The match has left us with quite a few half-baked thoughts rolling around our largely empty head. Rather than waiting for them to coalesce into something coherent, let’s opt for premature spewing instead.

It is good to play in Pakistan. It is good to play in different places

There was a great feel to England’s T20 tour of Pakistan a few months ago. (Here’s our recap.) It was not just that it was hotly-contested. It was hotly-contested at least to some degree because it felt like such a rare and exciting thing for everyone involved.

While that was England’s first visit to Pakistan in pure time, the Test tour has retained that same feel as crowds have been great and because these remain unfamiliar conditions now that we’re onto the five-day stuff. This brings a freshness to proceedings – you just don’t know how each match will go.

It’s not just that this England team are going about things in an interesting way. Being somewhere less familiar actually magnifies that. The moral of this is not just that it’s good to come and play in Pakistan; it’s that it’s good to go and play in all sorts of different places, against all sorts of different teams.

Different durations, different bowlers, different batters, different pitches, different places. Variety has always been, and should always remain, cricket’s greatest strength.

Pakistan are very much doing their bit

We don’t think it’s too one-eyed to suggest that Pakistan are the junior partner in the making-the-series-worth-watching stakes. Junior maybe, but still vital.

Without Pakistan’s titanic first innings batting, England’s helter-skelter last minute victory in the first Test would have been a far less dramatic and unnecessarily-paced win. In this Test Pakistan brought Abrar Ahmed into our world and then got within 26 runs of chasing 355 in the fourth innings.

It always takes two teams to make a fun Test series.

England are bowling sides out

It’s masked a little by the carpet bombing batting approach, but England’s bowlers are really performing of late. It’s now 17 Test innings in a row that they’ve bowled out the opposition. That’s no mean feat.

A key part of this is of course the batting however. England haven’t really struggled for bowlers these last few years – even when they’ve been shit – it’s just that they’ve generally had nothing to bowl at. Making actual runs is therefore proving very helpful. Doing so quickly also tends to mean that it’s either 10 wickets or defeat – time hasn’t often come into the equation.

The attack is being used in a clear-minded way too.

Ben Stokes is very much not Joe Root as a captain

Yesterday we tweeted and tooted how the Root to Stokes captaincy switch has provided a strong argument both against and in favour of making your best player captain. Stokes has been incredible and deserves plenty of plaudits, but we can’t help but think that everyone is being awfully nice in not highlighting the incredible contrast with Root’s stint in charge.

Root famously started out as “Craptain” and somehow descended from there. Wispy and ethereal was our verdict on his leadership when he finally stood down. And it was pretty clearly deeply unfun playing under him towards the end too. It feels a bit mean to dredge this up because Root’s fallen into line under Stokes without a hint of ego and is visibly enjoying himself, engaging in airborne arse-bumps with Mark Wood to celebrate wickets and the like. He’s such an admirable cricketer and person in so many ways.

But we can’t help it. We just keep getting all these reminders that trigger visions of a parallel timeline where Root’s still in charge.

In Pakistan’s first innings, James Anderson bowled two overs with the new ball, took a wicket in the second of them, and then didn’t reappear until the 29th over of the innings. Second time around, his first over was the 16th of the innings and his sixth was the 60th.

If that first innings usage seems a bit clever-clever and overly committed to a reverse swing strategy (he could surely have bowled a third over with the new ball with a full night’s sleep not long away) then just imagine how Root would have used Anderson in this match. Regardless of whether he was still in his right-arm fast-medium phase or not, Jimmy would have been used anything but sparingly.

What we’re saying is that this is what England fans could have – this or something very like it – but instead they’ve got Ben Stokes. Enjoy it.

Harry Brook is doing the early Joe Root thing with knobs on

Another Root comparison to finish. England have had a fair few Massive Young Talents come into the team over the years and every player acclimatises to international cricket differently. Ollie Pope’s made an erratic start. Jonny Bairstow was all over the place before mastering one-day cricket and then becoming unstoppable in Tests this summer. You may or may not be old enough (or perhaps you’re too old) to recall that Root’s arrival was characterised by him looking weirdly untroubled.

After 73 and 20 not out on Test debut against India in 2012, he went into his first spell of one-day internationals early the following year and made successive scores of 36, 39, 57 not out, 31, 56, 79 not out and 28 not out. Even if he wasn’t dominating, he looked like a man who had gone up a level of cricket and it was just absolutely no big thing.

There is a whiff of this in how Harry Brook has arrived at the bar and put in an absolutely gigantic order. Three Tests in, he has made 153 off 116 balls, 87 off 65 balls and then 108 off 145 balls. He’s hit six fours in six balls and somehow that wasn’t even his most productive over.

Brook had (quite understandably given how it’s been working for him) been overly aggressive in the first innings of this match, but second dig he recalibrated to the extent that he only scored four runs off his first 26 balls and 13 off his first 41. Then he started hitting fours and sixes again, like it was some weirdly easy thing.

Yes, it’s early days, but by the yorker of Waqar he’s packed a lot into them.

The King Cricket daily and weekly emails: mostly they’re England Test cricket… mostly.

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Are Stokes and McCullum right? Is a win bigger than a loss? https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/are-stokes-and-mccullum-right-is-a-win-bigger-than-a-loss/2022/12/05/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/are-stokes-and-mccullum-right-is-a-win-bigger-than-a-loss/2022/12/05/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2022 13:27:47 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=27910 3 minute read It was a win that England were racing to catch from the outset. The Test began with Zak Crawley hitting three fours off Naseem Shah’s opening over and it ended with the light meters out. Ben Stokes’ men never really slowed in between. Even if England hadn’t won, you’d have

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3 minute read

It was a win that England were racing to catch from the outset. The Test began with Zak Crawley hitting three fours off Naseem Shah’s opening over and it ended with the light meters out. Ben Stokes’ men never really slowed in between.

Even if England hadn’t won, you’d have to respect the effort. It’s hard to improve on 657 in 101 overs in your first innings and you could certainly forgive a side for failing to take 20 wickets on the same pitch.

England could barely have done more. That it was only just enough puts all that batting impatience into perspective.

The haste

To quickly recap, England reached 500 quicker than any team ever has before. It was really bloody weird. It was like they’d deployed not just one, but a whole herd of Virender Sehwags – their four centurions all scored at somewhere around a run a ball, or, in Harry Brook’s case, significantly quicker.

With the ball, they needled and wheedled and just about managed to avoid giving up. Credit to Pakistan for almost persuading them to do so. Replying to a first innings like England’s can’t be an easy job.

Then it was England’s second innings. In for a penny, in for a thousand pounds: 264-7 in 36 overs – an effort that did as much to keep Pakistan’s hopes alive as it did their own. Perhaps in making the running, they kidded themselves they were the only team that could win and so enabled that decisive effort with the ball in the dying light on the fifth day.

But what if it had all gone wrong?

How much of a risk?

“There may be a time where you risk losing to win and if Pakistan are good enough to beat us, that’s cool too,” said England’s coach Brendon McCullum before this series began.

That’s easy enough to say at the outset and it sounds even better when your approach has been vindicated with a win. But what’s everyone’s take if England had fallen flat on their arses in that first innings? Or if Pakistan had hared along to their fourth innings target and all of those earlier efforts had been in vain? How cool would that have been?

We wouldn’t say we’d have been 100% fine with it. But we’d have been cool enough.

Risking defeat in pursuit of victory is always admirable and often productive and that’s why it’s one of Stokes and McCullum’s central tenets. However, in the modern era, the upsides also outweigh the downsides to an even greater degree.

There will always be a point at which proactivity becomes irresponsibility but we’d argue that point is further along than it used to be.

Think of the matches you remember. Then do the impossible and think of all the matches you don’t remember. The relentless tsunami of international fixtures means there are probably quite a lot of the latter these days. A lot of cricket simply gets washed away.

That’s the basis of the equation here: victory and defeat aren’t really of equal weight. We remember both the good wins and the great wins, but only really the absolutely godawful losses – and even those we don’t tend to dwell on. And at least they’re colourful.

So why not risk losing? In the grander scheme of things, what would actually be lost?

Now that you’re all giddy risk-takers… have you thought about signing up for our email?

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