Follow UsSome players are defined by their numbers. Their achievements are quantified in runs and balls, and even a cursory glance at them is enough to tell you of their greatness. Like Jacques Kallis, for instance.
However, there’s a special breed of players whose legacy is defined by the moments they seize and make their own, rather than just their numbers in a statistical analysis. Ben Stokes is a player of this latter kind, as a batting average of 35.15 and bowling average of 32.02 does not really shout greatness.
But just by the sheer power of his will, and his penchant for being there in the middle and doing it, Stokes has done what very few cricketers have been able to do: become a whole that’s greater than the sum of his parts.
The world knows about his career-threatening injuries. A repaired knee, a broken back, a strained groin, and a brawl outside a pub — Stokes' body and spirit have been broken and rebuilt multiple times in his career. And yet, every time he's risen like a phoenix, and here he was at Lord’s, on the fifth day of a Test, bowling 10-over spells like he’s chugging beers.
On the third day itself, coach Brendon McCullum had to send a message via bowling coach Tim Southee that Stokes should take a rest as he had already bowled seven overs. The England skipper had bowled himself to the breaking point yet again and was fielding at the boundary. Southee quietly came from behind and whispered something to him. Stokes just gave a wry grin, acknowledging his head coach’s message reluctantly.
Remember, all this is after being sub-par with the bat for a significant amount of time by now. Had it been any other average all-rounder, a lack of runs would have affected his intensity with the ball. We have seen it on countless occasions in cricket.
However, no all-rounder in modern cricket is an embodiment of the all-round spirit as much as Stokes. It’s all about using every single opportunity he gets to impact a game, and then seizing it not by its collar, but rather willing it into submission through sheer force of perseverance while adversity reigns supreme around him.
He scored 44 and 33 runs in the two innings he got to bat; however, he knew those runs weren’t enough. He had let himself down yet again, and he had to make it up by his bowling. Otherwise, how will he sit right with himself? And England needed him to do that as well.
In India’s first innings with the bat, he dismissed Karun Nair by making him play at a delivery in the corridor of uncertainty after the Indian had avoided that temptation. And it wasn’t done just in a single delivery. It was done by consistently nagging Nair out of his comfort zone and making him play away from his body.
However, it was in the second innings that Stokes, the bowler, came to the front and showed how special a cricketer he is. After bowling 26 overs in the second Test that went till late on Day 5, he was back three days later in the second Test, which lasted all five days and all 15 sessions.
At Lord’s, Stokes broke all known boundaries of being a workhorse as he sent down 44 overs in the Test match! To do that with a broken body is just being a superhuman with no extra-terrestrial powers. In moments like this, even if you are exhausted by his adulation in the English media, you sit with your mouth agape and go, “What a guy!”
Safe to say, had it not been for his nagging lengths, where he kept banging the pitch and getting the ball to move even on a flattish track, England would have found themselves on the other side of the result in the close Test match at Lord’s. He kept the stumps in play, with 33% of his deliveries hitting the wickets.
The most astounding moment of the day was when he was in the middle of his second 10-over spell (after bowling 9.2 overs earlier in the day), and Jasprit Bumrah was adamant on defending everything that came his way. Stokes, even then, running on fumes more than blood, banged a ball into the pitch, which Bumrah mistimed while attempting a pull and got caught.
At the end, India lost by 22 runs, and right in the middle of it was England’s skipper, who six years ago on that very day, had become a mass hero in a country where cricket is a sport for the elites. On Day 5 at Lord’s, with the ticket prices going down and more regular fans showing up rather than suited celebrities, he once again became a hero.
Yet again, he had done it by showing insane amounts of perseverance that, by his own admission, had taken him to a “dark place”. And yet here he was, face red with blood, hair tangled in sweat, and the back bent just to catch a breath, showing his index finger that he’ll bowl one more over!
Probably, that’s why he understood what Ravindra Jadeja would have felt and hugged him, after the Indian played 181 deliveries on a Day 5 pitch. No one, but only an all-rounder like Stokes, would have understood what it would have taken the Indian all-rounder to pull off such a performance and still end on the losing side through no fault of his.
This win for Stokes wasn’t as era-defining as the 2019 World Cup win six years ago. It wasn’t as bombastic and Superman-esque as Headingley.
However, this was the kind of win that would continue to define Stokes as a cricketer, who lived and clutched the Carpe Diem ideal so much that he immortalised himself in cricketing folklore by just persevering and keeping at it. That would be the biggest legacy of Benjamin Andrew Stokes, the all-rounder. Not his numbers, which are just a part of him and not his whole.