Joe Root steers sinking ship as Ben Stokes inflates the lifeboat

The score is 13 for two. England have lost two quick wickets and beleaguered Test captain Joe Root sprints out to the middle to save the day. The deficit is 449. The task is too big. But Joe, if you wouldn’t mind, please may we ask you for that favour again.

If you like a pub quiz you’ll have liked this week’s Test. England made five changes to an XI for the first time since 1986. They had three debutants for the first time since 2017. Joe Root’s 164 Test caps was more than the rest of his team’s tally combined. Matt Fisher played his first Test since 2022. And James Rew kept wicket while looking suspiciously like Boris Johnson. How many kids did Boris end up admitting to having?

The players who have had the best week are those who did not play. As it stands, Ben Stokes is the cricketer England can neither live with, nor without. The carnage of the last fortnight was his own making, crippling embarrassingly, but ultimately a case of being out past the bedtime he set. In the boardroom, it’s a dismaying betrayal of trust and you can understand why Rob Key and Brendon McCullum were left bereft. But in the eyes of the general public, they want to watch Ben Stokes.

And part of that reason is because even with his diminishing returns with bat in hand, and diminishing knees with ball in hand, he balances the side in a way that no-one else can. Without him, at the Oval, England were forced to pick four seamers, no spinner, and a specialist batter on debut at seven. If we include this fixture, in which the last rites are still to be read, England have lost the last three matches on home soil where Stokes has been absent.

Last year against India, Jamie Overton was called in from the wilderness only to step away from red-ball cricket weeks later. While in 2024, against Sri Lanka, Dan Lawrence opened the batting, Chris Woakes was at seven and teenager Josh Hull debuted.

The lack of Stokes’s presence meant that interim skipper Root was left without a specialist spinner in conditions where one would have been perfect. In New Zealand’s second innings, England’s star bowler Jofra Archer sent down 16 overs. By contrast, Jacob Bethell, Root and Harry Brook – combining for the role of fifth bowler/specialist spinner – bowled 20 between them for combined figures of 2-95. No-one wants that.

The plans that New Zealand used to such great effect against Root and Brook in the first innings, with wicketkeeper Tom Blundell up to the stumps to Matt Henry and Nathan Smith, were replicated by England, but with a lower-quality wicketkeeper in Rew and a less effective seamer in Matt Fisher.

Aside from a bizarre opening hour and a half on day two where England pursued a short-ball strategy to Glenn Phillips and Kyle Jamieson, ideas were never the problem for England, but execution. England’s bowling attack boasted only 29 caps between them and conceded runs at more than four an over across both innings. As Root looked around, he had only Archer and Josh Tongue as known quantities. Both of whom, as high-pace, high-effort bowlers, operate better in a five-man attack rather than a four as was necessary here. When Ben Duckett was the third wicket to fall in England’s pursuit of 463, with the score sat at a meagre 40, the possibility of a four-day defeat loomed and babies to once again be thrown out with bath water. A brittle batting line-up failed, while Stokes, conspicuously absent and batting for Durham 250 miles away, made 95 in a return to form. It was on the nose.

But then, as the evening closed, a reminder of the good stuff this era has brought and a return to willingly deluding yourself of the impossible.

Root, who scored 14,000th Test run when reaching two not out, was joined at the crease by his accomplice Harry Brook. It was box office.

At one stage, Root did his best impression of Gordon Ramsay in cooking up the late cut in three different ways. He dabbed through, he struck past and he lifted over a helpless slip cordon. Brook, on the other hand, raced to a 33-ball fifty and at one stage sprinted down the track to play a now trademark lofted cover drive for six. Against Nathan Smith, with the wicketkeeper up to the stumps, he played a topspin forehand for six that sailed over square leg. Don’t think about it too hard. It’ll make your head hurt.

It was the interim captain at one end, paired with the man whom it was considered captaincy would be “too big a job” for this week at the other.

But then just like that it was over. Brook edged Matt Henry to a gleeful second slip, and England’s reality came crashing back. The deficit was still over 300. And the match would still be lost. Next in was the debutant Rew, another debutant in Jordan Cox, and then Jofra Archer at No 8 – two Test matches after he had previously batted at No 11. The dream is dead, long live the dream.

Play finished with England 182-5. Root, unmoved, and unbeaten, on 75 with 281 still to win.

Joe, if you wouldn’t mind, can we ask for one more thing?

Photograph by Gareth Copley/Getty Images