Cricket World Cup 2023: England’s embarrassing defence, and the Ben Stokes gamble backfires badly

As Australia prepare to put another nail in the coffin of England’s World Cup defence, their Ashes foe is grappling with any number of questions – but mostly just how did it all go so wrong?

We need to talk about Ben again. I know, I know. It’s tiresome. It’s been hard to get away from Ben Stokes ever since this ghost of an England World Cup campaign started, but at first that was because he was unfit to play and it seemed as though the team would never regain their mojo until he was back on the field.

But he has been in the side for three games now and, sad to say, he has not brought with him the best version of himself as a batsman, but rather something approximating the worst.

If you had been watching England bat in Mumbai, Bangalore and here in Lucknow, and had never seen these cricketers perform before, you would have given short shrift to England’s No 4. Almost whoever was bowling seemed too good for him, and without large slices of luck he would never have got anything like as many as 43 against Sri Lanka.

But this duck against India – which spanned ten balls, all from Mohammed Shami – was almost entirely without redeeming feature. Stokes left his first ball, which was sensible, but then inexplicably charged at his second and missed.The next two balls he failed to lay bat on.

Ben Stokes is bowled by Mohammed Shami. Picture: Getty

Stokes has endured a nightmare World Cup. Picture: Getty

In Shami’s next over, the eighth of the innings, he was beaten twice more, punted one ball unconvincingly to mid-off and pushed two more deliveries to fielders patrolling the ring. He had no need to rush because England’s challenge was not to score fast – they needed less than 4 and a half runs an over at the start of the chase – but to keep wickets in hand. The bowling was very good, but conventional cricket would have done.

But Stokes, who has played many great innings in circumstances requiring him to blend attack and defence, was clearly finding the constraints under which Shami placed him intolerable. You could see it in his body-language: he was bristling to do something eye-catching, to impose himself on the game.

When an all-rounder is denied the chance to do one of the things he’s used to doing – in Stokes’s case, bowl – he tends to want to make the others count all the more.

England gambled on Stokes being a game-changer once fit again – but it has backfired terribly. Picture: Getty

To the final delivery of the over, Stokes stepped back to free his arms and launch a rustic swing that would have embarrassed a tailender, and heard his stumps splay. He did not toss his bat in the air as he had when he was caught off a leading edge against South Africa the previous weekend, as though he’d experienced a rare aberration, but trudged off with shoulders and head down in recognition of a wider defeat – beaten by the bowler, the game and personal ambition.

You had to wonder what Harry Brook thought as he looked on from the England dug-out – Brook the batsman this England side cannot find room for, Brook the batsman who has scored almost 2,000 runs in the 21 months. “So they have left me out for that?”

England can’t find room for Harry Brook – the all-conquering batsman who is the future of this team. Picture: Getty

Stokes came out of retirement for this tournament. He wanted another crack at a World Cup and England were never going to deny him, even when he said he would be unable to bowl. When he scored a half-century in his first game back and a record-breaking 182 in his third, he and they must have thought the plan had been granted divine blessing.

But Stokes’s fitness problems of the summer were not an illusion: his body is broken and needs repair. No sooner had he arrived in India than his hip presented him with a new problem.

When he is up and running, Stokes is one of the most destructive batsmen on the planet. But he has always needed time to play himself in, as he did in his great innings at Headingley in 2019 and similarly at Lord’s and Headingley again last summer. His best periods of form with the bat have come when he approaches in measured fashion, taking care over the details. He could not appear further from that state now.

With the tournament gone, there is little point in Stokes playing further games. He was never going to play ODIs after this anyway. Brook should be given all three remaining games; he is the future and, as far as this format is concerned, Stokes the past. England and Stokes have to accept that the gamble to bring him back here – and it was a gamble given his physical condition – has not worked. It is time to move on.

Leaving out Stokes would be a big call but this is a cricketer who has been an automatic pick in all three formats since he was recalled after the World Cup of 2015. If he were to be pulled out now, it would neatly bookend a great period of English white-ball dominance, and signal that a fresh start was being made.

This article originally appeared in The Times and has been republished with permission.

Originally published as Cricket World Cup 2023: England’s embarrassing defence, and the Ben Stokes gamble backfires badly