10 minute read With his thin hair and love of whole milk, you could easily mistake Ben Stokes for a baby. But Ben Stokes is not a baby. Ben Stokes is a full grown adult man who plays cricket for a living. He plays it very well with a particular penchant for seeing
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Ben Stokes: Lord Megachief of Gold 2022
6 minute read Our annual Lord Megachief of Gold award is the highest honour in cricket. The title is recognition of performance over the previous calendar year. Here are all the winners. Up until now we’ve always recognised players for their batting or their bowling or both. This year, something else has swayed
Continue readingFive talking points after England’s fourth-ever Test win in Pakistan (and second in a fortnight)
5 minute read The second Test was “a differently played game” according to Ben Stokes. It still resulted in England winning in Pakistan though, which is not a thing that had happened too often until this month. The match has left us with quite a few half-baked thoughts rolling around our largely empty
Continue readingAre Stokes and McCullum right? Is a win bigger than a loss?
3 minute read It was a win that England were racing to catch from the outset. The Test began with Zak Crawley hitting three fours off Naseem Shah’s opening over and it ended with the light meters out. Ben Stokes’ men never really slowed in between. Even if England hadn’t won, you’d have
Continue readingBen Stokes should probably try and nail a second draft of England’s game before promising to rewrite Test cricket
2 minute read It’s good to be ambitious and open minded and not hidebound by the past. It’s maybe not quite so smart to talk about how you’re going to rewrite how Test cricket is played – particularly if you’re England. Ben Stokes has mostly spoken well since he took on the captaincy,
Continue readingBen Stokes is managing
2 minute read ‘Managing’ means two things. It means taking decisions and directing matters so that everything hopefully progresses more smoothly. It also means bumbling through in the face of various problems in the vague hope you’ll just get through it all somehow. Tired of the second approach, Ben Stokes has switched to
Continue readingBen Stokes’ England are so far beating their greatest enemy – second-guessing themselves
4 minute read “It’s a game of failure, batting,” said Joe Root five minutes after this Test finished. The statement was on the one hand very sage and on the other just plain wrong. Four times in a row England have chased a lot of runs to win. This would be remarkable even
Continue readingStokes and McCullum have the Jack Leach they created
2 minute read If you’re attentive and possessed of a decent memory, you’ll clock that the headline above is a very obvious reference to our December article, Root and Silverwood have the Jack Leach they created. There’s a contrast in man management here and if you read that article again, you’ll easily see
Continue readingCaptain Stokes v Captain Root
3 minute read Everything’s amazing and fun and positive under the new England captain. Remember that previous guy? Man was he a miserable arsehole. Didn’t have a clue, did he? Whatever happened to him? Sometimes you accidentally reveal something about the past. We remember being on this cookery course in Thailand once with
Continue readingYou see what happens? You see what happens? This is what happens when you give Ben Stokes the England Test captaincy and then invite him to return to action in the County Championship
2 minute read Ben Stokes played his third Championship innings for Durham in four years today. He made 161 off 88 balls. It took him 64 balls to reach three figures. Stokes brought up his hundred with what was his fifth six in five balls. The sixth ball of the over went for
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