Ashes 2019: How Ben Stokes brought a country to a standstill and a series to life

Sometimes there just are not the words. Sometimes, all you can do is conclude that nowhere on this planet can there be another game in the world capable of doing what Test cricket can. It isn’t often though, that there’s a single person we can apportion the entire awestruck feeling to.

Sunday 25th August 2019 at Headingley will go down, if not as the greatest team run chase of all time, then certainly as the greatest Test match innings ever played by an Englishman. Ben Stokes, arrived at the crease on Saturday in doomed rescue mission (chasing 359 to keep England in the Ashes), with his customary collar up in a mood of contrary resilience and somehow conspired to find himself still there at 4pm the next day, moving through partnerships, screaming then bowed then screaming again, carving then ushering then carving again, imposing his will on an otherwise lost cause to end up 135 not out and levelling this deeply compelling, endlessly confounding series.

His innings, which will already be memorised and filed in the minds of all that witnessed it as mandatory cricketing syllabus, was an ever-evolving art form. It was an unnervingly clear minded assortment of physical instinct and emotional restraint, an expression of unthinkable alpha zen the likes of which has never been seen before.

It’s closest rival, both for brute force, dexterity and, it must be said, luck, will be his own feature length film-worthy sibling of an innings in the World Cup final. One imagines, bar an emergency of the same proportions for which he and he alone is called, we will never see nothing like either ever again.

His moment of propelled genius, bookended by Jofra Archer’s transcendent 6-45 first up in the piece (moments that sandwiched some preposterously comic and, at the time, seemingly fatal cricket as England were bowled out for 67 at first attempt on day two), might save us all more than we know. It will certainly save us absorbing a fortnight of finger pointing and ruminating about how the art of Test cricket batting is dead and so on and so forth.

It’s certainly rescued us two more Tests of absorbing and meaningful cricket. It will also save us having to reluctantly conclude that a consolation of a wasted week was a middle aged man dressed as a beefeater wildly celebrate an inflatable watermelon being thrown back into the crowd by Archer. The mood at Headingley was one of irreverence and celebration whatever the outcome, and that somehow, implausibly, made it’s way underneath the skin of the game, forcing it out of sheer will, in England’s favour.

How fitting, and how cricket in it’s nature and nuance, that Stokes’ last-wicket stand partner at the end, contributing to the finish, should be the diametrically opposed Jack Leach. By the 124th over of the innings, the target now in total focus, the permutations of Stokes’ innings had suddenly begun to be felt elsewhere around the country (the real cricketing significance litmus test).

Whilst he farmed the strike, allowing his team-mate one ball to survive an over as a general rule, football grounds were suddenly distracted from their own job in hand to zone in, a bubble bursting feat of immeasurable proportions (Tottenham Hotspur Stadium remarkably echoed in cheers during the first half when the result eventually came in).

Sunday roasts and day trips in the bank holiday heat were aborted to find anything or anywhere to zone in. A phone. A pub. A radio. Something was happening, something at once rare and familiar but most importantly unmissable, and you had to see it. In the middle of the frequency, Pat Cummins stood at his mark, eyeing the opportunity still to be seized, one wicket to retain the Ashes, when Leach stopped play. He needed to clean his glasses. “I know I look stupid out there”, Leach said afterwards on television, lovably English in his consciousness of how he might have caused the entire country to standstill.

As he eventually turned to face, glasses clean and on, the ground shared one audible collective intake of breath as Cummins ran in. Stokes, at the non-strikers end and now bent over his bat, partly from exhaustion, didn’t even dare look.

Cricketers will tell you as readily as using the word ‘execute’ next to the word ‘skills’, that in pressurised situations, it is easier being involved than watching. This is a game, after all, played by those with a disposition to assert control. It went some distance in describing the intensity of the moment that Stokes, even in his wormhole of focus, suddenly felt such weighted perspective that he couldn’t look at all himself from the other end.

If he had, he would have seen Leach hit on the pads outside leg stump. He did turn to see the umpire give it not out. Cummins, having appealed out of hope more than any other tangible logic, shook his head at Tim Paine when asked the inevitable question. Regardless, in a yielding of far-reaching speculation, Paine used the Australian’s last review to challenge the on-field call. Unsurprisingly, it was still not out.

It was a decision that ten minutes later proved one that would cost Australia retaining the Ashes at the earliest opportunity. Nathan Lyon, fielding off his own bowling, inexplicably fumbled the ball at the bowlers end for a certain run-out with Leach far out of his ground, scrambling back mid-aborted single. His retaliation, the very next ball, struck Stokes plumb in front. It was out to everyone’s eyes but umpire Joel Wilson. There was no review left to correct it. If they had one spare, Stokes was gone and with it the Ashes.

The line between gone and here is always so much closer than we dare to admit. In this case, by a fated conspiring of circumstance, Stokes was still there. As he cut the winning runs, not just Headingley, but entire sub-sections of England burst with untold relief and joy, and Leach, now less concerned with the state of his glasses, ran head first towards Stokes, smashing into him helmet to helmet in an ill-prepared if wildly enthusiastic embrace.

It was a projection of triumph in which you felt, for that second, we were all Jack Leach, sprinting, with flailing limbs, towards our protagonist, in the only way that felt appropriate, to express our gratitude for his heroics.