From bad boy to captain-in-waiting, Ben Stokes has transformed his fortunes

When Ben Stokes missed the 2017-18 Ashes tour, in the aftermath of the fracas in Bristol, it seemed inconceivable that he could ever captain England. Set against the frustration and regret at leaving his team-mates to contend with an Ashes tour without him, you suspect that losing the vice-captaincy barely figured among Stokes’s disappointments.

Stokes has never been a cricketer who has gravitated to the captaincy. At Durham academy, his leadership experience was limited to two games against Scotland under-19s. Even at Cockermouth Cricket Club, his local team after moving to England from New Zealand aged 12, Stokes did not captain.

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“He didn’t really have a desire to want to be,” Jon Gibson, Stokes’s coach at Cockermouth, has previously said. Yet there were still inklings of Stokes’s cricketing acumen. “He thought a lot about his own tactics, which was to play attacking cricket and to make sure that you were challenging the opposition.”

Such qualities, combined with his integral worth to the side and closeness to Joe Root, led to Stokes being elevated to the England vice-captaincy in 2017. Stokes’s tenure lasted just seven games before the affair in Bristol, when he was found not guilty of affray after a brawl outside a bar.

Ben Stokes’ off-field indiscretion.Credit: Archives

The Stokes who returned to England in 2018 was a subtly different incarnation to earlier. He had always been among the fittest members of the side, but his punishing workouts after official training have taken that to a new level: his recorded running speeds have long ranked among the very top of the England squad. His diet has become healthier, working with team nutritionist Emma Gardner. For England, the main concern about Stokes’s fitness has been whether he pushes himself too hard and is not honest about when he needs a break.

The new Stokes also plays differently, with a little more restraint.

Bristol came at the halfway stage of Stokes’s career so far: he played 39 Tests before and has played 40 after. Before Bristol, Stokes had a batting strike rate of 64 in Tests; when he returned in 2018, his strike rate fell to 48. All told, his strike rate is 52 since 2018, still a fall of 12 compared to the first age of Stokes the Test cricketer.

Before the 2019 Ashes, Stokes was reinstated as Test vice-captain. It was reward not just for his phenomenal World Cup campaign, but also how he had embraced his broader responsibilities to the side since his return 18 months earlier.

For his close friend Root, Stokes immediately settled back into providing an essential source of consul and tactical advice - as well as simply being his most valuable player. His 135 not out in the Headingley Ashes Test was, in many ways, a combination of the best of the old Stokes and the new. After playing himself in with the asceticism of a monk, taking 73 balls over his first three runs, Stokes took England to victory with an innings of preternatural audacity. If it was not already, the notion of redemption became obsolete.

When Root missed England’s first Test during the pandemic, because of paternity leave, Stokes slotted in to do the job for the first time in a Test. England’s defeat could not be pinned on Stokes’s leadership - indeed, in West Indies’s second innings, Jofra Archer bowled his most hostile spell in Test cricket since the 2019 Ashes - but a foe that Root is overly familiar with: the frailties of England’s batting.

Stokes has always made clear he would not be interested in becoming captain were Root sacked against his wishes: by resigning, Root has paved the way for him to inherit the crown. For all the burden Stokes faces as a three-dimensional, three-format cricketer, he reaffirmed his commitment to Test cricket by declining to enter this year’s Indian Premier League.

Of course, Stokes will soon be acquainted with the brutal paradox of Test captaincy: how, for all the scrutiny of the role, there is an essential powerlessness to the job too, with a captain operating within the confines of what their team make possible. But if his side are in need of inspiration about what is possible, perhaps they only need to look at Stokes himself, and his own journey to the Test captaincy.

Telegraph, London