Ben Stokes: 'People think there's an anger issue. There isn't'

Things happen to Ben Stokes. This is perhaps because Ben Stokes is the sort of man who makes things happen. The one fuels the other.

It does not require an honours degree in cod psychology to recognise this. Take the year of 2015 (so far). In April, after being dismissed in Grenada, he was given a mock salute by the West Indies player Marlon Samuels, who was responding to Stokes’ earnest sledging earlier in the match. It went viral on the internet, the modern equivalent of a single going straight to No 1 in the hit parade.

In May, he made a hundred from 85 balls against New Zealand, the fastest century in a Test match at Lord’s. In August a spell of mesmeric swing bowling on the second day at Trent Bridge, after a breathtaking gully catch as England swept all before them on the first morning, hastened England’s spectacularly rapid pursuit of the Ashes. In September, once more at Lord’s, he became the first England player to be given out for obstructing the field in a one-day international when he automatically stuck out an arm as the Australian bowler, Mitchell Starc, attempting a run-out, threw the ball in his direction. In November, he leapt high and instinctively to his left in a Test match in Sharjah trying to take an improbable catch and landed on his shoulder, instantly provoking alarm and concern that he had incurred lasting damage.

That list is probably not exhaustive and, with one international match to go this year, the first Test against South Africa at Durban, starting on Boxing Day, has scope for addition. Next year will definitely bring more of the same. Stokes is that kind of guy, the kind who is needed by English cricket along with a few others, the kind who can put it on the front pages, the kind who can go viral on the internet.

He is an endlessly combative soul who likes a laugh. The controversial incidents which have marked 2015 are by no means novel, yet they seem to pass him by as he moves, seemingly unworried, on to the next. He is fearless, spontaneous, unspoiled by it all in the sense that he remains completely down to earth.

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At Lumley Castle, overlooking his home ground in Durham, he is happy to oblige Sky Television by donning a Santa costume for a promotional film for the South Africa tour. Nothing seems to be too much trouble for him, which is not the case with all players in such situations. Stokes likes hamming it up, though he takes off the red robe for this interview.

That innings at Lord’s, when he returned to No 6 in the batting order, was crucial to England’s season because it marked a decisive shift in their approach. Stokes and Joe Root, another of the fresh-faced brigade helping to alter perceptions and recruit new followers, had already put on 161 in England’s first innings, salvaging a dire state of affairs at 30 for 4.

In the second Stokes was irrepressible. He hooked and drove with equal ferocity, scoring 101 of the 132 he put on with his captain, Alastair Cook. It was one of those sporting occasions when the crowd could not believe what they were seeing (which was to happen on a few more occasions last summer).

Stokes gives a flavour of his thinking towards cricket when he is asked to reflect on this brilliant piece of batting and what was going through his head as he played it. “Nothing,” he says. “I always say that nothing goes through my head. I don’t think about much, I just try and hit the ball. I hit a few in the air, over the top, in the gaps, could have been caught, could have been run out, it just happened, it was just one of them.”

Just one of them which so few others could have pulled off. It was the same two years ago when England were being mauled by Australia and he stood up and made a magisterial hundred in Perth in only his second Test as though he had not a care.

The nature of Stokes’ talent makes most of what he does intuitive. There is the sense that he is working out what kind of cricketer he wants to be and what he might have to do to achieve that. It would be wrong to assume that his aggressive attitude in the field is not mostly controlled these days. It is designed, as it was with Samuels in Grenada and recently with the Pakistani captain Misbah-ul-Haq in Dubai, to elicit reaction.

“People might think there’s an anger issue; there isn’t, it’s just me. I have looked back on my best knocks for England so far in Test cricket and it’s all been when I have played the way I can and know I want to,” he says. “But I have still got to look and play each situation on its own merits.

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“I can’t expect to go out and play every time like I did at Lord’s against New Zealand, or Perth. But every time I have done well for England with a bat in my hand is when I have played my natural game and exactly the same as I have for Durham for four or five years.

“I was disappointed towards the end of the summer. I didn’t finish off the Ashes as well as I would have wanted to after starting off pretty well – very well, in fact. I just need to find a formula that makes my game more consistent.”

Underpinning it all is the constant realisation that there are other matters in his life as the father of two young children. This has not stopped him in his path – far from it – but has persuaded him that there is a different path from the one he was taking all too worryingly when he was sent home from an England Lions tour almost three years ago.

“I am probably the first one to have a drink in my hand at the end of the game but there are other things,” the 24-year-old says. “I’ve got two kids and 100 per cent that changes things. When they grow older you don’t want them to be reading that Daddy has been sent home more than once from a tour.

“You want to be a good role model for them and getting that responsibility put on my shoulders has then helped with me being a more mature person and probably a more mature cricketer. I’ll only have a beer with the intentions of having an occasional big night, otherwise I don’t bother.

“You’ve got to do this; you’re in the public eye and you can’t set a foot out of line now without someone putting it all over the internet. It’s just all those things that we know and we have got to understand – we have got to do it all at the right time.”

Stokes was 18 when he broke into the Durham side. In his fourth Championship match he made his maiden century, in his fifth he scored a sublime 161 not out from 202 balls against Kent at Canterbury in a televised match.

The innings, seen by selectors and pundits whom it might otherwise have passed by, propelled him into the public consciousness. He was always going to play for England but that put him up the pecking order.

There have been blips on and off the field: a badly broken finger needing three operations but making his one-day international debut later that summer; the sending home for not preparing properly yet months later making his maiden Test hundred; the broken hand sustained after punching a dressing-room locker in Antigua. Things happen; he makes things happen.

Although he has had stinkers with both bat and ball – he already has seven ducks in 34 Test innings and has twice conceded 100 runs in an innings – the game can come to him with an outrageous ease. He can make it difficult for himself as the selectors have sometimes made it difficult for him, shunting him up and down the order in all forms, as if unsure what he is good for.

At still only 24, there are solid indications he is taking stock a little more – without, it is to be hoped, curbing the flair that makes him special.

In the UAE a few weeks ago, Jimmy Anderson was effusive in his praise for both Stokes and his county colleague Mark Wood, and the way they had adapted to the conditions. From wanting to make things happen every ball they realised there had to be another way in the desert.

England have messed Stokes about a bit in his 19 Tests, 34 one-dayers and nine T20s. He made his name as what he called the shining light on the last ill-fated Ashes tour as No 6 and fourth seamer, roles for which he seems well suited. But on his eventual return after the broken hand he was relegated. It did not work.

“Batting at eight it was like I didn’t know what to do,” he says. “I played three innings, got three ducks, you could say that me and No 8 didn’t get on very well. I was disappointed but I understood. If I could have my time again I would do exactly what Moeen Ali has done. He has done so well there. To have a guy as good as Mo at No 8, watching him play the way he does, especially with the tail.

“But still, going to No 6 was good for me mentally. I was being given more responsibility and when that happens I thrive off that because I don’t want to let anyone down in my team or those who have put their trust in me by giving me that extra responsibility. The same applies to my bowling. It brings out the more passionate side of me.”

The way he plays, Stokes gives the impression that he thinks he is invincible. It is hugely engaging and what comes of being 24 and loving it all. But the shoulder injury, though not as bad as first feared, has made him think a little more.

“The biggest thing for me at the moment, that I’m more worried about than anything else, is my fielding. I field at point and gully, where you’ve got to dive. I have got to find a way to get my confidence back, knowing that I’m not going to injure it any more.

“Maybe if it’s not 100 per cent it’s just finding a way of being able to dive without damaging it. As you get out to the middle adrenalin takes over. It might just be one of those things I have to live with.”

Though he fervently dislikes it, it is impossible not to compare and contrast him with the other formidable England all-rounders of the last 40 years – Tony Greig, Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff – as they in turn were compared and contrasted. “I’m just me,” he says. But he should be treasured now and there is much more to come.

Ben Stokes is a global ambassador for New Balance