Ben Stokes needs to trust himself again before finding solutions

Ben Stokes was in his element, furrowed brow and piercing eyes, grizzled and bandaged and self-flagellating, talking about pain and responsibility in the Sydney Cricket Ground basement.

“I will always give absolutely everything,” he said. “We have had a lot of moments where we have done a lot of damage to ourselves. Part of being a sportsman is putting yourself through the ringer and sometimes you do get injured. But it is not through lack of effort.”

Come on, Ben. Tell me about damage and sacrifice. Tell me how much it hurts, how much you care. This is what he does best, discussing the dark places, thriving on the edge of the world, knowing how to lead everyone else to salvation because he led himself there first.

The past two months have somehow consolidated Stokes’s place as the most important man in English cricket, its emotional centre and sustaining life force. His role is far more secure than Rob Key’s or Brendon McCullum’s, and he could almost certainly have either removed at will. We tell ourselves stories in order to live, and no one in cricket does stories and narratives and legends like Stokes, a man who just seems bigger and better than the rest of us. A lot of these players just seem pleased to exist in Stokes’s light, to be welcome in the court of the warrior king.

But looking out at Sydney, with Stokes batting at No8 and unable to bowl, effectively reduced to specialist captain on one functioning leg, it was hard not to ask: was this a glimpse into Stokes’s future? Is this where this thing is going? Holding himself together through four and a half Tests here was a remarkable achievement, and he was 27.4 overs deep by the time he went down with a groin injury. Six months ago against India he also made it through four Tests unscathed before tearing his shoulder. What will his body look like in 18 months for the 2027 Ashes, then 36, which feels like his logical and likely end point?

Dismissed by Mitchell Starc in half his innings this series, he averaged 18.40 with the bat, although he took 15 wickets at 25.13, caveated by three brutal seven-over old-ball spells to allow his peers to take the new Kookaburra.

The older he gets, the more valuable he is as a bowler, both in experience and output, but the question is whether he can keep sewing himself together again, keep his already fraying sinews together long enough to earn his place in the line-up on merit alone.

And after his poorest series as captain, his conviction in his own brilliance and ideals shaken, this matters. Stokes’s overwhelming emotion over the past two months has been bemusement at how this happened, how he and McCullum got this so wrong, whether what he watched was really happening.

Somewhere in Brisbane, he stopped trusting himself and everything they had built, a serious issue for a guy whose whole thing is trusting his instincts and beliefs. His fields have been far less creative and aggressive, his bowling instructions ever-more predictable and loose, generally less willing to take intelligent risks in search of wickets, or capable of making them.

One of his greatest strengths throughout his tenure has been his field-setting to spin – Nasser Hussain called him “the best England spin captain I’ve ever seen”. Shoaib Bashir’s Test record is unquestionably only as strong as it is because of Stokes – in 15 matches under him, Bashir has taken 61 wickets at 36.06, while in four under Ollie Pope he has taken seven at 64.57. His domestic first-class record entails 19 wickets in 16 matches.

And so Stokes’s refusal to pick Bashir throughout this series feels as much a reflection of his creeping self-doubt as Bashir’s poor form, which has never been a reason not to pick him before. Meanwhile, he has seemed increasingly blinkered in his selections, backing Pope way beyond reason and continuing to insist that Brydon Carse open the bowling against two left-handers when all evidence suggested otherwise. Then there was his “Australia is not for weak men” in Brisbane, effectively a call for everyone just to be more like him.

Much like being a Test cricketer, being a Test captain is something you only really learn from experience, and the creeping suspicion is that Stokes’s true successor is not Harry Brook but Jacob Bethell, already England’s youngest men’s captain after September’s T20 series in Ireland. Graeme Smith was 22 when he was given the South Africa gig, and that worked out all right.

With five months until England’s next Test, Stokes will wallow in the pain and damage, recover and rebuild. But you sense his greatest task is not remodelling his team or his game, not designing Bazball 2.0. This series has made him doubt himself and his beliefs. The first thing he needs to do is find himself again.

No rest for England

Seven of the players who took part in the Ashes will go on to Sri Lanka and India for white-ball matches.

T20 squad: H Brook (Yorks, capt), R Ahmed (Leics), J Archer (Sussex) *ICC Men’s T20 World Cup only, T Banton (Som), J Bethell (Warwicks), J Buttler (Lancs), B Carse (Dur) *Sri Lanka tour only, S Curran (Surrey), L Dawson (Hants), B Duckett (Notts), W Jacks (Surrey), J Overton (Surrey), A Rashid (Yorks), P Salt (Lancs), J Tongue (Notts), L Wood (Lancs).

ODI squad: H Brook (Yorks, capt), R Ahmed (Leics), T Banton (Som), J Bethell (Warwicks), J Buttler (Lancs), B Carse (Dur), Z Crawley (Kent), S Curran (Surrey), L Dawson (Hants), B Duckett (Notts), W Jacks (Surrey), J Overton (Surrey), A Rashid (Yorks), J Root (Yorks), L Wood (Lancs).

England men’s tour of Sri Lanka

1st ODI: Thurs 22 Jan, Colombo; 2nd ODI: Sat 24 Jan, Colombo; 3rd ODI: Tues 27 Jan, Colombo.

1st IT20: Fri 30 Jan, Kandy; 2nd IT20: Sun 1 Feb, Kandy; 3rd IT20: Tues 3 Feb, Kandy

ICC Men’s T20 World Cup — Group C

v Nepal, Sunday 8 Feb, Mumbai

v W Indies, Wednesday 11 Feb, Mumbai

v Bangladesh, Saturday 14 Feb, Kolkata

v Italy, Monday 16 Feb, Kolkata

Photograph by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images