With Ben Stokes in the team, England can beat anyone. Without him, they are vulnerable. Other teams have to deal with injuries or lack of fitness. India were without Jasprit Bumrah and Rishabh Pant. Then again, the tourists won the two Tests Bumrah did not play and comfortably put away England 4-1 last year without Pant in the team.“No,” was Ben Stokes‘ simple answer when asked if he had any concerns that England are too reliant on him.
In reality, Ben Stokes is England’s beating heart. When he isn’t there as the all-action all-rounder, England lose their balance. Without him as captain, they lose his tactical nous and sense of focus. Runs, wickets and fielding. Ben Stokes is the personification of his team. It probably should be called Benball, not Bazball.
One wonders how Ben Stokes, the arch-competitor, coped with watching Monday’s finale go down to the wire. England’s patron saint of lost causes was the man to engineer their last one-wicket victory in a Test. Stokesless, England lost. The next time he will be seen on the field, hopefully, will be the first Test against Australia in Perth in November.
Ben Stokes stellar performance in a 5-match series vs India
Ben Stokes bowled 140 overs, his most he has bowled in a Test series. Before the nerve-wracking series finale, Ben Stokes was the leading wicket-taker for his side with a whopping 17 scalps to his name at 25.23. His efforts weren’t limited to the bowling front.After initially struggling to find his mojo, Ben Stokes rediscovered his form with a scintillating 141(191) during the fourth Test in Manchester. With Ben Stokes firing all cylinders, McCullum was in awe of the experienced all-rounder.
Ben Stokes took himself to dark places after elongating his spells in London and Manchester. Ben Stokes even bowled 10-over spells at Lord’s to inspire the Three Lions to a famous 22-run victory. The unrelenting spells took a toll on his body, and he was ruled out of the contest due to a right shoulder muscle injury.
England captain Ben Stokes was ruled out of the fifth and final Test match of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy series against India, owing to a right shoulder injury. Ollie Pope will step in as the skipper in The Oval Test, which will get underway on Thursday.This is a massive blow for England as the in-form star Ben Stokes was the Player of the Match in both the third and fourth Tests for his all-around performance.
So far, Stokes scored 304 runs in the four Tests, comprising a century in Manchester, and picked up 17 wickets, the most by any bowler in the contest, at 25.24, with one five-wicket haul. During the fourth Test, Stokes was forced to bowl lengthy spells after India batted for 143 overs across five sessions to pull off a draw. Stokes bowled a total of 35 overs across the two innings and was seen clutching his shoulder during the spell.
England Test captain Ben Stokes achieved a rare milestone in Manchester on Thursday by taking a five-wicket haul against India, finishing with figures of 5/72. This accomplishment makes Stokes only the fourth cricketer in men’s Test history to score 10 or more centuries and take at least five five-wicket hauls. Stokes joins an elite group of legendary all-rounders including Garfield Sobers, Ian Botham, and Jacques Kallis with this achievement. He currently has 13 Test hundreds and five five-wicket hauls to his name.
Stokes delivered a remarkable performance during the final day of the third Lord’s Test. He bowled nearly 10 consecutive overs and claimed KL Rahul’s crucial wicket.
Working alongside Jofra Archer, they reduced India to 82/7 during a 193-run chase. Stokes later broke a resilient 35-run partnership between Ravindra Jadeja and Jasprit Bumrah, with Bumrah facing 54 deliveries.At Lord’s, Ben Stokes bowled 44 overs and claimed five wickets. He also contributed with the bat, scoring 44 and 33 runs, and executed a crucial run-out of Rishabh Pant, earning him the Player of the Match award.
While nowadays everyone citing the importance of Workload management, A question really baffles that Stokes who has bowled 127 overs across the series until now for his 17 wickets alongside important knocks with the bat just defies this workload talks in thin air. Former New Zealand bowler and England bowling coach Tim Southee is in all praise of this maverick all round skipper Ben Stokes and has praised laurels for him considering him as the vital cog in England’s wheel for the Ashes 2025-26
Ben Stokes will be the key Player for England to win Ashes 2025-26 in Australia reckons Tim Southee
Tim Southee grinned as his team-mates engulfed him. After two-and-a-half months in England training gear in his role as bowling coach – or, officially, “specialist skills consultant” – he was back in playing kit for Birmingham Phoenix. More pertinently, he had just cleaned up Trent Rockets’ Joe Root with the first ball he had bowled to him, which crashed into his leg stump.
It was a wicket that epitomised cricket’s gig economy. Southee, 36, retired from Test cricket after New Zealand’s home series against England last year and is still working out his next steps. He spent the start of the year at the ILT20 in the UAE, and is now juggling franchise contracts with his first steps into coaching in an arrangement he describes as “the best of both worlds”.
It led to the unusual sight of Southee bowling long spells in the nets to England’s batters during their recent series against India to prepare himself physically.
“A few opportunities presented themselves in the nets, especially the day before a game where bowlers don’t bowl a lot,” he explains.
“I had to get through some overs at some stage, having not played since January.”
The Hundred has been a challenge for him, with three expensive wickets in five appearances compared to 14 cheap ones in nine games last season. But he has enjoyed the “Kiwi flavour” at Phoenix, with head coach Daniel Vettori recruiting Southee’s long-term new-ball partner Trent Boult for the 2025 season, joining Adam Milne in an all-New Zealand fast-bowling attack.
As the Hundred started, New Zealand’s next generation of fast bowlers were spearheading a dominant 2-0 Test series win in Zimbabwe, and Southee has helped to oversee a similar transition with England’s seamers in the world after James Anderson and Stuart Broad. Their depth and resilience was tested in the 2-2 draw with India, but Southee was impressed.
“There’s a lot to be excited about,” he says.
“You’ve got to also realise that the guys like Brydon Carse, Gus Atkinson and Josh Tongue, they’re very new to Test cricket still. Someone like Brydon Carse feels like he’s played a lot of cricket – he has, across three formats in the last 12 months – but he’s still very, very new, very raw in his Test career.
“Gus Atkinson has achieved so much in his first 10 [13] Test matches: a 10-for, a hundred, a hat-trick… Josh Tongue as well, you see how exciting he is when he gets it right: he’s got pace, bounce, skills. Combine that with the way that Ben Stokes is bowling… and throw in the likes of Mark Wood, Jofra Archer. It’s pretty hard not to get excited about that group of bowlers.”
He was particularly impressed by Carse’s gruntwork, believing he bowled much better than a series haul of nine wickets at 60.88 might suggest.
“He didn’t have a lot of success on some pretty tough surfaces… But [I loved] the way that he kept coming, his attitude towards it, his ability to reach 90mph at his peak but also operate in a pretty skilful way.”
Southee believes that the dramatic final day of the series at The Oval will make England “a little bit hungrier” when they return to Test cricket in three months’ time:
“It was a disappointing way to finish, but there’s still plenty of good things to take out of the series.
” Does he believe they have the resources to take 20 wickets regularly in the Ashes this winter? “Yeah, I certainly do.”
Clearly, Ben Stokes’ recovery from his latest injury – a torn shoulder muscle – will be a key determinant
“He put a lot of hard work in to get himself back for such a big series… The more he does it, the more he believes in his body and knows that he can do extraordinary things… For him to have an impact with the ball is massive for the side. Hopefully, that can continue.”
England can win the Ashes. They have their best chance of success in Australia since they last won a series down under, back in 2010-11. It is a low bar, mind. In the past 14 years, they have played 15 Tests in Australia, lost 13, drawn two and won none. That chance to win begins and ends with Ben Stokes. If that sounds like hyperbole, consider this: Of the England squad that travels to Australia, none will have ever tasted victory in a Test down under and as few as five will have played a Test there.
Between them, they will have one Test hundred on Australian soil, and that will belong to Stokes. Of the two bowlers to have a five-wicket haul in Australia, one will be Ben Stokes, the other Mark Wood. If Wood is fit for November, he will not have played a Test in 15 months. Ben Stokes’ task is clear. He needs to recover from a shoulder injury, play like Ian Botham, captain like Mike Brearley, and stay the course. The last part is probably the hardest. He has now not played a full part in any of England’s past four Test series because of injuries.
He has history of turning water into wine (or whatever he’s drinking these days, after claiming to have cut back on the booze): The 2019 World Cup final, the 2019 Headingley Test. Cape Town, the 2022 T20 World Cup final. The angry hundred at Lord’s in 2023, Headingley again the same year. Lord’s this year. If he pulls this off, and gets his hands on the urn in Sydney in January, it really would be his greatest miracle.
There is something about this England team that particularly irks the Australians. They cannot fathom the Bazball way. They respect Ben Stokes, but do not rate New Zealander Brendon McCullum. He won one of his 16 Tests against the Aussies, and fluffed his lines in the 2015 World Cup final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
There are 108 days until the first Test in Perth on 21 November. 108 days of worrying about Stokes’ shoulder and hearing Glenn McGrath’s score prediction. 108 days of figuring out how to work when sleep deprived and turning down Christmas with the in-laws because it clashes with the Boxing Day Test. 108 days of checking Sheffield Shield scores and hoping Archer doesn’t slip in the shower. 108 days of wondering whether England can do it.
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