the times | Friday March 18 2022 2GM 69
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ty to watch his debutant bowlers, Fisher
and Saqib Mahmood. Fisher had an
interesting start, conceding a boundary
with his first ball, taking a wicket with
his second as John Campbell wafted
around off stump, and getting a telling
off from the umpire fourth ball for run-
ning on the pitch. He bowled at a steady
pace, found some bounce from his high
action and almost had another when an
edge nearly carried to slip.
Mahmood was the fifth bowler used
by Root and came bounding in from the
Joel Garner end for the final spell of the
day. He looked a little sharper than
Fisher through the air but generated
less bounce from a slighter lower arm
and has yet to get his account up and
running. After the early loss of
Campbell, Brathwaite did especially
well to battle through to the close after
captaining for more than 150 overs in
the field. He is a resilient cricketer.
It was not a day for statistics but there
are always some to land, and yester-
day’s killer stat was Stokes becoming
only the fifth all-rounder to have scored
5000 runs and taken 150 wickets in
Tests. It’s an elite group, formed of
Sobers, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev and
Jacques Kallis and with the exception of
Kallis all have been crowd pleasers first
and foremost. That was the player who
appeared before England’s supporters
again yesterday and they were over-
joyed to witness the revival.Ben Stokes said that his century in the
Barbados Test was one he would cher-
ish more than most given all that had
happened to him recently, but he was
more concerned about what impact his
runs would have on England’s chances
of forcing victory. Stokes’s innings of
120 from 128 balls was his 11th hundred
in Tests and his first since July 2020.
“Playing in a team sport, you never
like to think of anything in a selfish
way,” he said. “Of the hundreds I’ve got‘This century meant more than most’
personally, that’s probably one of the
more memorable ones with everything
that’s gone on over the past 18 months,
two years. So it’s a very special feeling.
“I felt good out there but a lot of
credit must go to Joe [Root] and Dan
[Lawrence]. They set up to allow the
middle order to go and free their arms.
I was thinking quite far ahead and
thought it would be nice to have a bowl
at them with some big runs on the
board. So it went well.”
Stokes celebrated his century with an
emotional gesture to the skies inmemory of his father Ged, who died in
December 2020.
“In India I got 99 [in a one-day inter-
national in March 2021] and it was a bit
of a dagger in the heart,” he said. “It was
nice to get there [yesterday] and re-
member him that way. I don’t like to
speak selfishly but it was a nice feeling.”
He said that the situation in which he
scored his runs was reminiscent of
Cape Town in 2016, when he struck a
career-best 258. “[There were] loads of
runs on the board and I felt like putting
my foot on the accelerator,” he said.Simon WildeI
f England were going to get their
Test cricket back on track, Ben
Stokes rediscovering his best
form was a non-negotiable
element. He balances the side,
gives the dressing room its energy
and deals in the currencies any team
prizes — runs and wickets. There has
been too much talk about a red-ball
reset and not enough about a
red-head reset — let us get a bit more
out of Jonny Bairstow and a lot more
out of Stokes.
The Tests in Antigua and Barbados
provide incontrovertible evidence
that Stokes is back. His hunger to
perform has been evident since the
earliest days of the tour, when he
trained so hard during the warm-up
match at Coolidge. He has looked
utterly focused and, having shared
a few honest meetings with the other
players, has rationalised the Ashes
nightmare.
Joe Root thinks that he is being
hard on himself, but Stokes believes
that he was not fit enough in
Australia and could not do the things
he wanted. He is doing them now, all
right. He got through 41 overs in the
first Test — we had been told he may
not bowl much at all — and gave
away nothing; his match return was
three for 66. Here in Barbados he
was intent on having an impact
with the bat.
He had a long session in the nets
before the start — some estimates put
it at an hour — and played himself in
with all the care of a man on a
mission. He did not take long to get
going and when he did he put the
bowlers to the sword.
In Australia, his back-and-across
movements made it easier for him
to defend, but harder to score; now he
is standing still and giving himself
room to swing his arms and launch
the ball into the far beyond. It has
been the best part of two years since
he played an uninhibited innings of
this size and sort. As he used to do in
his pomp, he bought England time
with the speed of his scoring, and
England will need time if they are toEngland to rare milestone
Root’s first lieutenant is
hungry and back for good
take 20 wickets on this pitch. In the
dark days of Australia, when Root’s
future as captain hung in the balance,
Stokes, 30, was seen as a potential
alternative. Now we are in the
Caribbean, Root has cemented his
authority with two hundreds and a
strong performance in the field in
Antigua and Stokes could not have
shown himself more motivated in his
role as first lieutenant.
The past 20 months have been a
turbulent time for Stokes and it is
little wonder that his cricket during
this period was so uneven. Before
belatedly signing up for the
Ashes tour, he had appeared
in only four of England’s
previous 14 Tests, so it should
have been no great surprise
that he has taken time to
find his best rhythm with
bat and ball.
He is now on his seventh
Test in succession since
early December and the
benefits of more
regular cricket, and the
regular training thatgoes with it, are becoming apparent.
He had just had one of his best all-
round Tests against West Indies at
Old Trafford in July 2020 when he
learnt of his father Ged’s declining
health and that he would need to
leave to see him in New Zealand. He
briefly returned to playing before his
father died in December 2020, but he
missed the Sri Lanka leg of the Asia
Test tour early last year. Then came
his serious finger injury at the Indian
Premier League.
The first surgical operation did not
solve the problem and kept him out of
cricket for a prolonged spell; when he
attempted a comeback he found the
pain excruciating. The frustration this
caused, combined with the
psychological impact of his father’s
death, pushed him into a difficult
place.
He articulated this in a newspaper
column after announcing his
availability for the Australia tour
following a second operation on his
finger which brought almost
immediate relief — he was back in
the nets within days.
The finger was a big issue but, he
conceded, “I had also been struggling
with bubble-life and events off the
field. I don’t want anyone to feel the
way I did because I wasn’t in a good
place and I’m not afraid to admit it. I
was in a real dark place and having
some difficult thoughts.”
Stokes must now feel like a
completely different person from the
one he was describing there.
Between that man of the match
performance at Old Trafford in 2020
and this West Indies tour, Stokes’s
Test returns amounted to 517 runs
and 11 wickets; in the equivalent
period up to and including that
game his returns were 1,179
runs and 39 wickets. It is
not difficult to equate
Stokes’s personal
decline with the tail-
off in England’s
results.
As chance had it,
head coach Trevor
Bayliss got the best of
Stokes and Chris
Silverwood the not-so-
good. The success of
whoever takes full-time
charge of the team may
depend on the extent of
the renaissance of this
remarkable, indefatigable
all-rounder.After injury setbacks
and personal loss, the
all-rounder has found
his best rhythm yet,
writes Simon Wilde
Stokes’s rapid century
Of Ben Stokes's 11 Test centuries, his
innings of 120 from 128 balls
yesterday was his third fastest by
strike-rateMost sixes in Test innings
by Ben Stokesv South Africa (score: 258, Jan 2016)
130.30
v New Zealand (101, May 2015)
109.78
v West Indies (120, yesterday)
93.75
v West Indies (100, Aug 2017)
80.64
v South Africa (112, July 2017)130.30109.7893.7586480.6473.20v South Africa (Score: 258, Jan 2016)v Australia (135*, Aug 2019)v West Indies (120, yesterday)v South Africa (112, Jul 2017)11Stokes’s hundred was
an emotional momenthh2
Matt Fisher, the
24-year-old Yorkshire
medium-pacer, removed
John Campbell — caught
behind — with his second
ball in Test cricketWest Indies
v England
Kensington Oval,
Second Test, day three,
2pm start
TV: BT Sport 1
Radio: talkSPORTPHILIP BROWN/POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES