Big-game Stokes pushes his limits to keep England alive

"Tell him," Brendon McCullum shouted down to Tim Southee from the dressing-room balcony, gesturing towards Ben Stokes at long off. Stokes had just bowled his seventh consecutive over since the tea interval, prompting McCullum to dispatch Southee down to the boundary edge, in front of the Allen Stand. England's coach had decided that enough was enough.

As India's batters plugged away, Stokes seemed desperate to become the protagonist of the third day at Lord's. He charged in for 14 overs, his most in a day since the opening day of this series, hitting a top speed of 90mph; he hit Nitish Kumar Reddy on the helmet, then nicked him off; and he produced a moment of magic in the field to run Rishabh Pant out.

Stokes' final figures - 2 for 63 from 20 overs - were nondescript, and only counted for so much with the teams emerging exactly level after their first innings. But these were promising signs for Stokes and for England, not least after an apparent right groin issue on the first evening threatened to prevent him from bowling at all.

"I was just seeing how he's going," Southee, England's bowling coach, said of his conversation with Stokes. "He's a tough man to get the ball out of his hand, certainly when he's got rhythm like that. [I was] just down there to check and see how he was getting on. It's been hot, but he's a guy that loves those times of the game when the game is in the balance."

It was during a five-over burst in the second hour of the day that Stokes hit the 90mph mark, troubling Pant with a short ball that left him taking evasive action. His average speed in that spell was 85mph/136kph as he charged in, determined to break Pant's partnership with KL Rahul - which he did on the stroke of the lunch interval.

Pant opted to drop-and-run, seemingly to get Rahul back on strike so he could reach his hundred, but Stokes ran in from cover and picked the ball up cleanly. He was far closer to the striker's end, but saw Pant struggling to make his ground and pinged the ball at the bowler's end instead. His direct hit caught him well short, and Stokes roared in celebration.

He continued to crank the pace up on a pitch offering almost nothing for both teams' seamers, and rattled Reddy on the helmet with a bouncer. After tea, he found some extra bounce from just short of a good length to take his outside edge, then tried to draw Ravindra Jadeja into a battle; when Southee talked him out of an eighth over, his figures for the spell read 7-2-13-1.

"When he's got the ball and he's got the rhythm like that, he's able to find stuff from nothing," Southee said. "He bowled a few jaffas through that spell - at a good clip - and cracked [the game] open for us… He was touching 90mph, and then to produce the run-out like he did for Pant and open an end up just before lunch: he's just one of those cricketers who makes things happen."

It may not be immediately obvious from a record of eight wickets at 34.50, but Stokes has been England's most consistently threatening bowler in this series. He managed his workload on a flat pitch at Edgbaston, bowling 15 overs on the first day but only 11 thereafter, and appears to have benefited from it. "He is in some unbelievable rhythm," Southee said.

When England last faced India, Stokes' recovery from knee surgery rendered him unable to bowl and badly upset the balance of their team. Without a replacement allrounder, they instead went into all five Tests with just four frontline bowlers, and suffered the consequences: England only twice managed to take 20 wickets in their 4-1 series defeat.

This was the second time in three Tests that Stokes has bowled 20 overs in an innings, a workload that he managed only once in the preceding 24 Tests, dating back to December 2022. If India's batters, three flat pitches and the soft Dukes ball have exposed the limitations of England's attack in this series, then at least they have been able to rely on Stokes' body.

The next task for Stokes will be to contribute with the bat. He has not scored a Test hundred in over two years, and he was uncharacteristically tetchy when asked about his recent struggles with the bat ahead of this Test; the longest answer he gave on the subject was: "Hopefully, a score is around the corner."

Stokes has not played any cricket since his hamstring surgery in January outside of England's four Tests, but there were positive signs during his first-innings 44: it was his highest score of the year, and perhaps more importantly, the first time that he had faced more than 100 balls in an innings since England's tour to New Zealand late last year.

His most recent Test hundred, against Australia at Lord's in 2023, came in a blaze of red mist in the aftermath of Alex Carey's stumping of Jonny Bairstow. After another flashpoint on the third evening brought this series to life, the final two days at Lord's could not be set up much better for him.