Ben Stokes: England’s unlikely Test captain changing the team’s psyche

Ben Stokes is the England Test captain and yet he is not an England Test captain at all.

There is a long-held preconception of what the right man should look like, a head-boy persona so clearly defined that young pretenders like Joe Root and Alastair Cook were burdened with the tag FEC (future England captain) years before they assumed the role. Those tipped for the job have tended to be batsmen with neat and tidy technique and a stoic temperament, the sort that embody English cricket’s clean-cut veneer. What long-serving captains have all had in common – Root, Cook, Andrew Strauss, Michael Atherton, Michael Vaughan, Nasser Hussain, Graham Gooch – is that they were highly dependable and broadly predictable. The great mavericks like Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen eventually got a crack at the job, but it didn’t last.

Stokes is in the latter mould, a genius multi-talented cricketer who can turn a game or even an entire series to his will in a couple of overs. On the pitch he has produced magical highs, such as his astonishing 135 at Headingley in 2019 to save the third Ashes Test, and his defining 84 in the World Cup final a few weeks earlier. And a few desperate lows, like the final over of England’s T20 World Cup final defeat in 2016 when West Indies’ Carlos Brathwaite smashed four sixes off Stokes’ first four balls, leaving him devastated.

Off the pitch he found himself embroiled in a high-profile court case after punching two men in a Bristol street brawl in 2017. Stokes missed the winter Ashes series as a result and was dropped by sponsor New Balance, but was later cleared of affray after testifying that he was defending a gay couple from homophobic abuse. He accepted an ECB charge of bringing the game into disrepute which brought an eight-game ban and a £30,000 fine.

It fed into a growing narrative of Stokes as a wild and unruly character, far from captain material. Yet gradually that story has been unpicked to reveal someone thoughtful and sensitive who values family before cricket. Stokes was brought up in New Zealand by his English mother and rugby-playing father Jed, who died of brain cancer in 2020 aged 64; Jed had a finger partially amputated following a rugby injury, and Stokes celebrates with one finger folded down in tribute to his dad. Stokes has a tattoo representing his Maori ancestry, and he fights fiercely for his family, publicly condemning The Sun newspaper when it dredged up a personal tragedy on its front page which deeply upset his mother Deborah. She later received damages for the story which was deemed not to be in the public interest.

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With his reputation rehabilitated and the reign of Root in deep malaise, Stokes was the obvious choice to become Test captain this summer, despite his unconventional fit. He admitted taking the captaincy from his great friend Root was a little uncomfortable, especially as he attempted to chart a new course for the team while taking care not to explicitly criticise Root’s more controversial decisions, like dropping James Anderson and Stuart Broad for the winter tour of the West Indies. Stokes has delighted in being able to heap praise on Root’s brilliant form in the current series with New Zealand.

England were in need of fresh impetus and they appear to have got it, winning the first two Tests in style as Stokes now attempts to lead the team out of their slump and into a new era of positive cricket. Combined with the attacking instincts of laid-back new head coach Brendon McCullum – the former Kiwi captain is referred to as Baz by the players – Stokes wants to fundamentally alter the mentality of the group. All the early talk has been of getting the players to relax, to drop tense shoulders and lighten the burden of the England shirt.

“Baz and Stokesy have been very much all about enjoyment, fun and expressing yourself,” revealed Broad on the morning of the dramatic final day of the second Test, having been recalled to the side for the series. “It’s not reinventing the wheel, it’s just freshening up the mindset and bringing home how enjoyable it is to play cricket. It’s about making sure enjoying yourself is the number one thing for the day.”

The remarkable run chase which followed was the perfect display of what the Stokes-McCullum era aims to be. A year ago England didn’t even contemplate winning a game when set 270 to win by New Zealand; this time it was their only thought and they went about it with thrilling, reckless abandon.

It helped that the scenario was perfect for such an assault. Trent Bridge offered up the flattest of flat tracks with runs flowing all match, and England will not be able to simply clobber the skin off the ball when the going gets tough in Australia or India, for example. The ultimate test for this new England era will come when they need to rein in those attacking instincts that have come to characterise the careers of Stokes and of McCullum, owner of the fastest century in Test cricket’s history.

Stokes is a hardy competitor who knows how to dig in – it is easily forgotten that he barely scored a run in his first 60 balls of that famous Headingley innings – and he will need that resilience in the more difficult moments, of which there will be many. If he lasts longer than a couple of years in the job then he will face tricky decisions about the roles of Anderson and Broad – the ECB is still searching for a new national selector and getting the right person to shoulder some of this burden, while complementing Stokes and McCullum, will be key to his captaincy.

The notion that all political lives end in failure could be applied to much of the history of England’s Test captaincy, too. Stokes will have hard days ahead. As a master of all formats of the game, the expectation will be heavy and almost constant, perhaps concerningly so for a player who recently took a break from the game to look after his mental health. But if ever there was a time for England to take a new, more free-spirited direction it is now, after a run of one win in 17 Tests and with the best teams in the world adopting a front-foot approach. And if ever there was an alternative captain to succeed it is surely Stokes, a cricketer who may not be predictable but has proved wholly dependable, and so often inspirational. Whatever happens, it will be quite a ride. Two matches in and we already have proof of that.