Ben Stokes has lifted England as a leader — now they need the all-rounder
The ground was quiet at 8.45am on Thursday morning, save the thwack, thwack of ball on bat. In the nets, before the rest of the team had made their way on to the ground, was Ben Stokes, putting in a shift. England's captain has had precious little game time since tearing his hamstring in New Zealand in December, but the Tests will come thick and fast now, ten of them in the next seven months that will define his captaincy.
There is no question that he has transformed the England team. In outlook and attitude it is totally different from the one he inherited, more assertive and confident in every way, but they still lack a significant scalp. This summer against India and the winter down under both provide that opportunity, which has been greeted with a subtle shift in language and emphasis. 'It's about winning,' Stokes said on the eve of the first Test at Headingley.
To do that, Stokes will have to be at his best as a player. Because of his dominant personality and radical approach as a leader, we sometimes overlook the importance of his performances on the field, but it is time for him to remind everyone again what a good cricketer he is. The balance he brings to the team is crucial, and there is no one else in the country who can hold down that role as a top-six batsman and frontline bowler.
It is two years since Stokes scored a Test hundred — a brilliant, swashbuckling Ashes century at Lord's in a losing cause. Since then he has been hindered by injuries which have limited his all-rounder duties and only once in the past year, in a scene-stealing performance against New Zealand in Wellington, has he taken more than two wickets in an innings.
His build-up to this series has been as unorthodox as some of the fields he likes to set. Fit again in time for the Zimbabwe Test last month, Stokes then opted not to play in either of the Lions fixtures against India A after that, which means he has bowled 11 overs in competitive cricket and faced only 13 balls this calendar year. In answer to questions about whether he ought to have played for the Lions, he says defiantly that at 34 years old he knows his game and his own mind and that he is ready to go.
The long-standing injury to his left knee and more recent hamstring tears had a knock-on effect on his bowling technique and he has used the recent weeks to make tweaks to his action, to get back to where it was around 2020, when he felt at his best as a bowler. He will be dissuaded from bowling those bone-shattering spells that send him into the 'red' (injury) zone, and he will look to bowl his overs in a more impactful way. He looked in eye-catchingly good rhythm against Zimbabwe.
Great players tend to rise to the occasion, and only the Ashes is bigger than an India series for an England cricketer now — and this is, let's not forget, the start of a new World Test Championship cycle. While the bowling is bolstered by the return of Chris Woakes, who acts as something of a lucky charm for Bazball, having won ten of the dozen matches he has played under Stokes, England's strength is their batting. Expectations will fall this week on the home-town Headingley pair, Joe Root and Harry Brook, the latter getting a first opportunity in Tests against India, having missed the tour there in early 2024.
England will come hard as they always do, as they did in that one-off Test at Edgbaston in 2022, when they chased 378 to win in only 76.4 overs. That is the template that they look towards in a post-Stuart Broad and James Anderson world. Hard, dry pitches that favour their aggressive batsmen. Even Jasprit Bumrah, who captained India in that game, was taken for more than four an over in the run chase, so he knows what the Bazball lash feels like. With a well-grassed pitch, a fast outfield and a forecast for increasingly hot temperatures, rapid scoring is on the cards again.
That one-off game was a carry-over from the abandoned Test in the summer of 2021, pre-Stokes, but Bumrah, remember, was player of the series over those five matches, having taken 23 wickets in all. He remains unusual for an Indian bowler in that the vast majority of his Test wickets (158 wickets in 32 games, out of a total of 205 wickets in 45 matches) have been taken abroad. No bowler with more than 200 wickets has a lower average in Test cricket than him.
Great fast bowlers elevate any contest, as Pat Cummins and Kagiso Rabada did in the World Test Championship final. With his stuttering run-up, hyperextended arm and unique action, which means he releases the ball a foot closer to the batsman than other bowlers, it will be a treat to watch Bumrah in action again, although whether England's batsmen feel the same way is doubtful.
He remains the one capable of causing havoc, having dismissed Root nine times in 14 matches, Ollie Pope five times in nine and Zak Crawley four in seven. He has been pencilled in for three games, two of which presumably will be at the start of the series, given the lengthy break between the first two Tests. Things will be easier when he is not available.
Shubman Gill, India's fifth-youngest Test captain, is lucky to have Bumrah and he will lean on his senior bowler, as well as Rishabh Pant, his vice-captain, who spoke very engagingly before the game. Without Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Mohammed Shami and Ravichandran Ashwin, Gill leads a team in transition. How well he manages to hold his nerve if the ball starts flying all over will be important, and he wouldn't be the first captain to be unnerved by England's strategy.
It would be quite the achievement if Gill could get one over Stokes in his first series in charge, one of the reasons why he said in the pre-match press conference that a victory here would top winning the IPL. India have only ever won three series in England — in 1971, 1986 and 2007 — and have only ever won one five-match series away from home.
First Rothesay TestHeadingley. Starts Friday, 11amLive on Sky Sports Cricket
England XI Z Crawley, B Duckett, O Pope, J Root, H Brook, B Stokes (c), J Smith (wk), C Woakes, B Carse, J Tongue, S Bashir
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