Ben Stokes always takes us on a ride

There are many compelling sights in our sport. Right up there is a batting team on the top, the conditions flat, the ball not doing anything at all for the other bowlers, and then Ben Stokes charging in and drawing life out of nowhere in a long spell.

Stokes has the rare ability to take you along on the ride. You don't need to be a cricket connoisseur to know something special is taking place in front of your eyes. You can almost feel the strain he puts himself through, the stretching of every sinew, the twisting away of the torso to create the unusual angle, the high pace eked out of a battered body, the unusualness he extracts from dead conditions, and the satisfaction of having achieved something when it hadn't seemed possible.

It is not magic. In this series, for example, Stokes has swung the ball more than any other fast bowler. His release is wider than most - only Jasprit Bumrah and Josh Tongue have gone wider in this series - and the swing creates problems coming from that angle.

When Stokes is nearing the top of his mark, it seems like he is dragging his feet and has no gas left. They hardly seem to leave the ground, and seem like they are being thrown forward by force. Then he picks up pace and leaves a piece of himself on the pitch. It is tempting to wonder how much better his numbers would have been had he just been a bowler.

Every time you feel this must be it for him, he comes back for another over, against the wishes of the coaching staff as his workload needs to be managed. It just doesn't seem possible for Stokes to have a measured go. Even at press conferences, he is not finishing a chore, but gives thoughtful answers. Despite all his injuries, only a small percentage of his spells is short. Among 27 fast bowlers who have bowled 100 or more spells since 2021, only James Anderson, Matt Henry, Kagiso Rabada and Ollie Robinson have bowled a lower percentage of spells of four overs or fewer.

This is also part of the reason why Stokes is rated highly as a captain. His tactics on the field can yo-yo between the astute and a random smokescreen, but he has the ability to drag his team-mates with him, much like Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff before him. He doesn't take the new ball, still bowls long spells, and batted against nature just to get a buy-in into the style of play he and Brendon McCullum wanted England to adopt.

Stokes batted at 57.07 per 100 balls before Bazball, and has gone at 66.83 since. At the start, he batted frantically just to drive the message home despite being the one batter in the line-up who was more at home playing traditionally. It is the fall in the batting average from 36.05 to 33 during Bazball era that is starting to hurt England. In matches that Stokes has played in the Bazball era, top seven batters have averaged 38.25 overall. Of course he could ease his own batting load a little by getting in a better batter than Zak Crawley, who averages only 31.79 on some of the flattest tracks of the last decade, but Stokes the captain is not one for half measures.

In opting for this way of playing the game in the first place, Stokes has shown courage of conviction to go against the grain. Captains are known to design pitches to suit their bowlers to win matches; Stokes and McCullum saw a weakness in their batting and asked for surfaces that played to their strengths instead, asking batters to make up for it with quick scoring. It hasn't turned them into world-beaters, and the surfaces haven't all been the same, but it has improved the results.

Stokes will continue to rouse us with those bowling spells and will keep inspiring his team, but eventually the game is won by runs and wickets. He is one of the players who can get away with some leeway because of the way he plays, but the next eight Tests that Stokes plays have the ability to overshadow even that reputation. Especially because it is quite plausible that Stokes retires at the end of the Ashes.

A lot - disproportionately so - rides on the next eight Tests. Stokes could perhaps drop down a slot if he feels mentally spent. Jamie Smith has shown signs he can bat in the top six. Alternatively Stokes could perhaps reinforce the batting and drop Shoaib Bashir. A home series against India on the line and the Ashes at the end of the year, runs not coming, rest of the bowling struggling, a body to manage, this is going to be some ride that Stokes will surely take us along on.