BEN STOKES INTERVIEW: MOVING ON FROM JAMES ANDERSON AND ‘WORLD’S BEST KEEPER’ IS RIGHT FOR ASHES
Moments after James Anderson had taken seven wickets in his first outing of the season, Ben Stokes sent him a message.
‘Did you really have to do that?’ He replied ‘yeah, ha, ha sorry mate.’
A few weeks earlier, Stokes had been part of the England delegation that took Anderson to a Manchester hotel to tell him it was time to cash in the pension.
It’s not news Anderson has taken wonderfully well, although he did his best to put on a mask at Lord’s on Monday. The competitive streak has not dimmed and he will almost certainly be keen to prove a point against West Indies this week.
Stokes admits in an exclusive interview with Telegraph Sport that Anderson still has the world-class skills to be good enough for Test cricket.
“No doubt about that. He is still incredible,” he says. But the decision was made with the Ashes in mind. “His skillset will be missed but I look at it this way, the group of bowlers we have now are at the worst they are going to be because they will only get better. Their ceiling is so high, the more game time we can give them we will find ourselves in a very strong position in Australia.”
The first half of the Stokes captaincy concentrated on the here and now, focusing on the cricket in front of them, now it is the second rebuild, the one that will define his legacy. It is why there is a sense of renewal with Anderson one of four big decisions about the shape of the team. Jamie Smith replaces Ben Foakes, a man Stokes still describes as the “best keeper in the world” despite dropping him; Jonny Bairstow is 100 Test matches and out but with the captain saying the “door is not closed”; Ollie Robinson has made way for younger blood and needs to prove he can be “robust enough” for Test cricket and “backing spells up and doing hard overs when it is flat” while Stokes’s great friend Jack Leach is left out for Shoaib Bashir, despite being selected ahead of him by Somerset. “It’s Bash’s natural attributes and his attitude. There is no fear.”
‘I hope Jimmy takes all 20 wickets’
But it is Anderson that will take the focus this week, possibly a good thing because it will ease the scrutiny on Smith and the other bowlers. “I hope he takes all 20 wickets if I’m being honest,” says Stokes. “I listened to Stuart talk about his retirement and wanting to go out on top and there was one thing he said that even made me think about when the time comes for me to go. He said: ‘I didn’t want a new player to come in and go “I thought Stuart Broad was meant to be good.”’ I thought: ‘Yeah that is a good thing to think about.’ Jimmy’s skillset is obviously still good enough for international cricket. But we have to make big decisions and we have got the Ashes to think about in 18 months’ time. Nobody will ever say, ‘Oh is that Jimmy Anderson? I thought he was meant to be good’ because he is still incredible.”
Stokes is very relaxed but itching to get going again after almost six months since the last England Test in Dharamsala, an innings defeat inside three days that capped a long tour to India. He is sitting in a high-backed, soft, padded chair in the grandiose offices of the Wimpole Clinic where he had his hair transplant treatment, and is greeted like an old friend by the staff who pop by to say hello as he returns for a surgical review. He says the treatment boosted his mental health, something he has always spoken openly and honestly about. It is hard to imagine Stokes lacking confidence but he says treating his baldness helped him step on the field under intense scrutiny. Perhaps the current regeneration of the team is an extension of that.
“A decision maker can’t make a decision based on what other people might think about it. I base my decisions on what I think is best for the team here and now but with this one there was Australia in mind. It is a tough place to be when you make these decisions because they are big calls but we have to go with what we think is right for the team going forward. We have got to be big enough and brave enough to make those decisions,” he says.
“If you look at how much time there has been from our last series up until this one, there has been a lot of time to think where we want to take the team to the next level. In sport if you’re not thinking about progression then you end up standing still and one thing I don’t want to see as captain of this team is us standing still.”
In reality the decisions around Bairstow and Anderson were not difficult. Neither has performed to their high standards consistently over the past 12 months, and Stokes and Brendon McCullum cannot waste matches on others as the clock ticks towards Australia.
Bairstow is taking time out to spend with his family, and it remains to be seen if he has the hunger to fight his way back. “If you look back at Jonny’s injury, it was a huge thing for him to go through. That was career-ending for a lot of people. I know he was very proud of how he managed to come back from that. For someone to have such a serious injury like that there was always going to be some repercussions and he has not managed to find that form again,” Stokes explains. “We have gone in a new direction with Jamie Smith who, for the last two or three years, has been very consistent with run-scoring and we feel the way he plays and takes the game on is the perfect fit for us.
“When it comes to selection stuff, me and Baz came up with a consistent way of delivering a message. Baz does good and bad news and I’m there to have a follow up chat if players want to do that. I messaged Jonny and he is having time with his family. He is enjoying time relaxing but I have no doubt we will have a chat at some point.
“Ben Foakes is an amazing wicketkeeper, the best in the world, but there are other things we have taken into consideration with Jamie’s selection. It is one of those things as an England team you would love players you have picked to play in that role for their counties but also understanding that counties have their own ways of operating that they feel is best for them to be successful.”
The primacy of that Ashes series in English minds re-emerged last week when Stokes had a dig at Australia on X, formerly Twitter, saying his team are “living in their heads’ after last year’s Ashes comeback from 2-0 down to level the series, only to be denied a win by rain. There has been an element of rewriting history in Australia, forgetting the storm that saved Pat Cummins from becoming the first Australia captain to lose a 2-0 lead, but England are also without a series win since Pakistan in 2022.
“The tweet was a bit tongue in cheek. It is all fun and games. I don’t mind that kind of thing as long as it is not taken too seriously,” he says. “People can say what they want to say. It is England versus Australia. There is always going to be niggle.”
‘The knee is the best it has been for a long time’
One of the crucial changes this week will be the sight of Stokes with ball in hand. His recovery from knee surgery was so good he managed to bowl ahead of time against India, dismissing Rohit Sharma first ball, and since then has built up strength with Durham. In three championship matches he has taken 18 wickets at 18.83, bowling like his younger self.
“The bowling is coming on really well. It is great to be able to sit here after two years not knowing how it was going to be on a day to day basis to now being as good as gold. It is really refreshing for me as a player and captain knowing we can always have four seamers. It balances the team so much better. I know I offer the team so much more when playing a bigger role with bat and ball. The knee is the best it has been for a long time. There is always going to be something there. It doesn’t mean it is brand new, but it is a thousand times better than what it was,” says Stokes.
“Before the operation I was bowling bouncers because it was the easiest ball for me to bowl because there is more margin for error. The hardest thing when my knee was bad was to hold length and line for a sustained period of time because of how I was landing. I went from being a very braced front knee to incredibly bent because it was too sore. When I was braced it was excruciating so it got further and further bent and that is why I found it very hard for sustained periods of time bowling Test match lengths but now I don’t have to worry about that.”
Without Anderson and Broad, Stokes will naturally have to bowl more. Will there be a moment at Trent Bridge, venue for the second Test, when he automatically looks around to summon Anderson for one more burst? “If I was ever to say ‘I wish I had Jimmy here’ it would not put too much confidence in the bowlers I have out there would it? I have full confidence they can take on a very similar role Jimmy played for England. Giving people game time now will hopefully put us in a strong position to go to Australia and win the urn back.”
Even Anderson will admit that is the main thing.
2024-07-08T16:04:35Z dg43tfdfdgfd