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Is there something Ben Stokes can not do on a cricket discipline? Following the Old Trafford Test, or the 2019 worldwide season for that matter, the reply to the above query is a powerful no. One method to sum up Stokes’s match-winning contribution towards West Indies is by way of numbers—254 runs with the bat and three wickets with the ball. But that could be a little too simplistic. For, the reality stays that the nice all-rounder’s effort was an entire lot greater than mere numbers. In the primary essay he scored his slowest Test century (the hundred got here off 255 balls). In tough circumstances, that was the necessity of the hour.
But when the necessity modified within the second innings, Stokes opened the England innings and smashed the quickest Test fifty by an English opener, ever. It doesn’t fairly cease there.
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With the ball on the ultimate day, the first-change bowler dismissed the harmful half-centurion Jermaine Blackwood on the stroke of tea to show the tide for his facet. Just as he had within the first innings with the wicket of Kraigg Brathwaite, West Indies’ prime particular person innings-maker within the Test with 75.
All of the above, coupled together with his magic on the 50-over World Cup and his miraculous 135* on the Ashes Test in Headingley final yr makes Root declare that “we are in the presence of greatness.”
Sure. But what makes that greatness occur? A couple of behind-the-scenes males at Stokes’s IPL membership, Rajasthan Royals, who appear to know him nearly in addition to his England team-mates try to clarify simply what makes Stokes tick; and simply why he’s cricket’s first “Mr. Incredible”.
TEAM FIRST, EVERYWHERE
When Royals firmed up their plans forward of the 2018 IPL public sale, Stokes was on their precedence checklist. He had already been paid the largest cash for a foreigner by Pune within the earlier season and his efforts had taken all of them the way in which to the ultimate. There was, nevertheless, just one doubt—Stokes’s newfound fame for being a foul affect after his bar room/avenue brawl in Bristol the earlier yr.
As homework, a senior member of Royals’s staff administration referred to as on Andrew Strauss, the previous opener after which ECB’s Director of Cricket. “He is a No 1 guy, an absolute team man,” is alleged to have been Strauss’s reply. Having determined to construct their staff round him, Royals went all out for Stokes and obtained his companies for ₹12.5 crore—the most costly participant within the 2018 public sale.
Ben Stokes graphic.
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In two seasons with the Jaipur staff, Stokes has not been in a position to ship the trophy to the franchise. But in keeping with each gamers and the backroom employees, he has lived as much as Strauss’ description and extra.
“We have realised just why he is the best possible team man,” says Zubin Bharucha, Director of Cricket, Rajasthan Royals.
Bharucha believes that taking part in knocks such because the one in Headingley (the place he scored 74 out of the final 76 runs in a last- wicket stand with Jack Leach) comes extra naturally to Stokes than to others as a result of he places the staff first.
“His mentality is to protect or defend his teammates. Everything he does is based on that,” says Bharucha, who was additionally a former opening batsman for Mumbai. “That is essentially who he is as a person. So, in tough situations, he thinks it is his responsibility to carry the team and that’s when he is at his best. That’s his biggest strength.”
Stokes himself stated one thing related after he collected his Player of the Match trophy in Manchester on Monday. “I’ll give everything to the team— whatever is asked of me. It’s a case of doing what’s needed at the time,” he stated and that angle comes as no shock to Royals’s batting coach, Amol Muzumdar.
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“Just the attitude he has when it comes to playing hard cricket, that lets him do it,” says Muzumdar, earlier than he talks of the work that Stokes places into his sport. “In my entire career, I have never seen a more hardworking cricketer. No wonder he gets the results. He just invests and invests in his skills with the right kind of attitude. And he is always looking to achieve something extraordinary. That’s why it has been a pleasure to work with him.”
Stokes, says Bharucha, additionally has no vested pursuits in his dealings with the administration. “What you see is what you get. Lots of players are guarded or have an agenda when they want to speak to you. Not Stokes. He is a complete straight shooter and will tell you when something has gone well and will be equally honest should something not be right,” he says. “You always know where you stand with Stokes. It’s that straightforward.”
The gamers too are in awe of what Stokes brings to the desk throughout an IPL marketing campaign. Bharucha claims that Riyan Parag, one of many finds of the 2019 season and the youngest half-centurion within the match, carried out the way in which he did solely as a result of confidence Stokes gave him. Parag agrees.
The greatest recommendation Stokes gave the boy will maybe resonate with the kids within the sport in the present day. “In one game in Jaipur, CSK needed some 18 from the final over and Stokes conceded those runs. In the bus back to the hotel I sat next to him so I could learn how to deal with such lows,” says Parag, setting the story up.
“But Ben was looking into his phone. So, I asked him if he reads comments/hate messages. He said: ‘The only opinions that matter to me are from my friends, family and my kids. Nothing else matters to me.’ That taught me a lot.”
The ones who maintain it uncomplicated of their heads are sometimes destined for greatness. Stokes is not any completely different.
Already the 29-year-old is being spoken about in the identical breath as the nice all-rounders of the 80s (Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Ian Botham, Richard Hadlee) and extra just lately, Jacques Kallis. In truth, he’s solely the sixth man to ever tally greater than 4000 Test runs in addition to 150 wickets, and is the second quickest to get there when it comes to Tests (64) after the best, Sir Garfield Sobers (63 video games).
But those that know him effectively will let you know that numbers and statistics imply as little to him as his personal previous. The former ensures that he doesn’t have a giant head. And the latter helps him transfer on from incidents that might in any other case have had the efficiency to cripple a lesser man.
Before the brawl of 2017— which obtained him dropped from the Ashes later that yr—Stokes was additionally on the receiving finish of 4 consecutive sixes within the final over of a World Cup remaining in 2016, which in flip gave the West Indies their second T20 world title. The fourth six by Carlos Brathwaite, in truth, had Stokes on his knees in the course of the Eden Gardens.
But when the main target was not on him, Stokes obtained up and dusted himself off, readying himself for the few ebbs and lots of flows that awaited him within the instant future.
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