Can Ben Stokes really carry on doing all of the things? And what’s Shubman Gill’s lifespan as a captain?

4 minute read

“Pain is just an emotion,” Ben Stokes told his men at Old Trafford – a nonsense claim just a few small steps below Dalton’s standard-setting “pain don’t hurt” in Road House.

For those that don’t know, Dalton is a world famous bouncer in a world where bouncers can be world famous; the kind of guy you’d travel across the country to hire if you’d bought an incredibly violent dive bar and now found yourself needing “the best” (or at least the second best after Wade Garrett because “Wade Garrett’s getting old”). 

Michael Vaughan once told Wisden: “Road House taught me a lot.” We’re worried that Patrick Swayze’s character has become established as some sort of font of strategic wisdom at the ECB with his various pronouncements mandatory study material for every potential captain. (Vaughan apparently put great stock in Dalton’s instruction to his staff to “be nice”.)

At one point in Road House, Dalton gets stabbed in the arm and doesn’t even flinch. He does later have to go to hospital though.

Pain is not just an emotion. Pain signals damage.

Optional suffering

Sometimes pain is instantly significant (a stabbing, say). Other times it’s a strong hint that you should stop doing something because otherwise a small injury is liable to get an awful lot more severe. 

No-one ever rallied the troops with sports science though. No-one ever revved themselves up by taking stock of their niggles and carefully assessing whether any of them were likely to result in serious harm. 

And so it was that Ben Stokes persuaded himself to deliver a different kind of bouncer to his opposite number yesterday; to a man who is, in his own way, similarly battered and bruised. After being struck yet again, Shubman Gill shed his gloves to reveal hands that are by this point 90 per cent Elastoplast.

Gill continued to another hundred – his fourth of the series. It’s almost as if batting has become his great escape from captaincy, which often appears to inflict on him an even greater pain than that from his mangled fingers. Is this brand of self-care sustainable? Will he be driven to ever-greater feats of captaincy avoidance, perhaps culminating in five solid days of batting without a declaration?

> Shubman Gill seems only half angry about hitting Test hundreds

It’s a slightly different equation for Stokes, who habitually goes out of his way to convey to everyone just how much he loves captaincy. The danger in his case is that he doesn’t get to do the leadership bit because he’s cricketed himself into the ground.

Time for a short break

We all love Ben Stokes the all-rounder. We all love watching the batting and bowling show. It’s just that it’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore how frequently the programme’s being interrupted by breaks for niggles.

This seems an odd thing to say given he’s batting and bowling more than he has in years, but Stokes currently seems hell-bent on ping-ponging from one extreme to the other.

At Lord’s he suffered a groin problem and for a while it looked like he wouldn’t be able to bowl again. He then got through 24 overs in India’s second innings, hitting 90mph in the process.

He said he spent four days in bed after that, but then bowled another 24 overs in the very next innings, at Old Trafford. This led to the Ghost Of Hamstring Injuries Past flickering in and out of existence and he then suffered a cramp-induced off-field interval halfway through his hundred.

Stokes didn’t bowl at all the next day, but then returned with a new ailment – a sore biceps tendon – which he could be seen nursing between bouncers.

Stokes’ appetite for the game is hard to fault. He says he’ll play the fifth Test on Thursday (but only if they bin off Soul Limbo and let him write the theme tune, sing the theme tune).

Is he back to his best? Old Trafford was the first time he’s hit a hundred and taken a five-for in the same Test match, but the whinging body parts show why that is such a rare feat for anyone.

Garry Sobers was first to manage it twice and even he never achieved it again. Four other players have since matched Sobers: Mushtaq Mohammed, Jacques Kallis, Shakib al Hasan and Ravindra Jadeja.

Only two players have done this brand of double more often. R Ashwin had four such Tests, while Ian Botham managed it five times – most ludicrously at the Wankhede in 1980 when he followed 6-58 in India’s first innings with 7-48 in the second.

> What has been the most improbable feat by an England cricketer in India?

It’s worth pointing out that the last of Botham’s ton-and-five-wicket-haul combos came at the age of 28 – but then Beefy didn’t really look after himself the way Stokes does. Or indeed at all. Even during that Mumbai Test, he said he didn’t at any point go to bed before 4am.

You can’t do that forever. But then even with the best preparation in the world, you can only ever postpone the inevitable. No matter how strong we think we are, we all succumb to the pain eventually.

If you want to find out more about the ins and outs of the Patreon campaign, you can find more details here. It’s for (the benefit of) everyone!

If you’re new to the site, why not sign up for the email first to get a feel for what King Cricket’s about.