Ben Stokes – England's colossus who is four players in one

New York Times

a day ago

It was when Ben Stokes suffered his second serious hamstring injury of the year in New Zealand last winter that he once again demonstrated his extraordinary fighting qualities in adversity.
'Something else to overcome? Go on then,' posted Stokes on X after breaking down while bowling during the third Test in Hamilton.
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'I've got so much more left in the tank and so much more blood, sweat and tears to go through for my team and this shirt,' he continued. 'There's a reason I have a phoenix permanently on my body.'
How that phoenix has risen this summer from the ashes of yet another setback, and how England's chances of winning the Ashes this winter are enhanced if their captain is fit enough to play a full all-round role in Australia.
On Saturday, Manchester's Old Trafford rose again to this colossus of a cricketer on the fourth day of the fourth Test against India when Stokes added his first century in two years to his first five-wicket haul in eight years (before India held up England's charge towards a convincing and series-clinching victory).
It is a measure of his achievement that only three Englishmen had previously done the double of a century and five-wicket haul in the same Test – Tony Greig, Ian Botham (five times) and, last year, Gus Atkinson against Sri Lanka at Lord's.
Stokes is also only the fifth captain of any team to achieve the landmark and the first for 42 years, after Denis Atkinson of West Indies in 1955, Garfield Sobers of West Indies in 1966, Mushtaq Mohammad of Pakistan in 1977 and Imran Khan, also of Pakistan, in 1983.
Those figures, and the rarity of such dominant performances with both bat and ball, showed just how important one of the true all-round greats still is, at age 34, to England.
Stokes took himself out of the attack on Saturday when India began their second innings 311 runs behind England's huge score of 669 because he was still feeling the twinge that forced him to temporarily retire hurt, supposedly with cramp, while batting on the third day.
And England were a far less potent force with the ball without a captain who has been reborn as a frontline fast bowler this summer, India taking the game into a final day and staying alive in the series by moving to 174 for two after losing those two wickets in the first over.
England can only hope and pray it does not prove serious again, because Stokes has been their best bowler throughout four Tests in this series, taking 16 wickets so far and bowling 129 overs before today of genuine pace and venom at close to 90mph.
He is truly back to his best with the ball, just seven months after suffering the latest and most serious of the knee and hamstring injuries that threatened to curtail his bowling involvement and damage the all-important balance of the England side.
Stokes was having none of that, working relentlessly over the winter after surgery with England strength and conditioning coach Peter Sim and physio Ben Davies and returning at the start of this summer in the best shape of his life.
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During those long days on the sidelines, Stokes watched footage of England's victory against South Africa at Cape Town early in 2020, when he bowled 23.4 overs in the second innings and won the game with a late three-wicket burst.
That was how he wanted to bowl again, with his front leg fully braced in delivering the ball to give him the pace and effectiveness he lost, particularly when he had a chronic left knee problem during the 2023 Ashes that eventually led to yet more surgery.
And that is how Stokes has been bowling this summer — and on Saturday he was back to his fluent best with the bat too, hitting three sixes in his 141 and becoming only the third all-rounder after Sobers and South Africa's Jacques Kallis to make more than 7,000 runs and take more than 200 wickets in Test cricket.
He is truly two players in one.
Or three, if you include the leadership that has given him the highest winning percentage of any England captain who has led the side in more than 30 Tests. Call it four if you add the fielding that has seen him safely pouch 113 catches… That's how valuable Stokes is.
He has known so much of that adversity along the way. From being sent home from an England Lions (the B team) tour of Australia in 2013 for disciplinary reasons when coach Andy Flower told him, 'You don't want to be an England player.' To which Stokes replied: 'Yes, I do. I'll show you.'
There was more trouble along the way before Stokes did indeed show England his true worth, notably when he became involved in a fight outside a bar in 2017 and ended up in court before being found not guilty of affray.
And there was a reminder of the personal adversity he has suffered when he looked to the heavens after reaching his hundred at Old Trafford and made his crooked finger gesture in honour of his father Ged, who died through brain cancer, aged 65, five years ago.
The gesture is because Stokes Senior once had a finger amputated so he could continue his career as a rugby player and there is plenty of that toughness in his son, now it has been channelled so positively and productively into winning Tests for England.
England's ability to win this fourth Test, and so the series with one match to play — with Shubman Gill and KL Rahul standing firm against everything their attack, minus Stokes, could throw at them on Saturday — could well come down to whether Stokes can bowl on its final day.
And their chances of upsetting the odds and winning in Australia this winter, for the first time since 2011, could well be dependent on the captain's ability to bat and bowl at the very height of his powers.
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'We're hoping he will be able to bowl on the last day,' said England assistant coach Marcus Trescothick afterwards. 'He's a bit stiff and sore after having a lot of bowling over the last few weeks, and he was cramping up a bit when he batted. He's had a huge workload. Of course, you have that little bit of worry and his absence has created a hole, but we'll see how he goes tomorrow. Fingers crossed, it will all be OK.'
'Something else to overcome? Go on then…' — as Stokes would undoubtedly say.
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