With No Ben, There Is None To Stoke It!

Ben Stokes is England’s MOST VALUABLE CRICKETER. But the balance of probability is that England will have to defend the Ashes without him. However, even before the Stokes incident, Australia were clear favourites for the series. The reason is simple. When two flawed teams meet in Test cricket, it tends to be the one playing at home who prevail. By TIM WIGMORE.

- Tim Wigmore

“If you don’t read the news you’re unin­formed,” the American actor Denzel Washing­ ton said last year. “If you do read it then you’re misinformed.”

Somehow these words seem pertinent in light of the Ben Stokes affair. At times it has felt little more than an exercise in confirmation bias. Those on both sides have dug into their positions — Stokes’ de­tractors ask how on earth he could have been out at 2:30 on a Sunday night when a game was 60 hours away and the series remained live; his defenders point to two gay men claiming he saved them from “homophobic thugs” on the street — and seem loathe to change them. The testimony of the gay couple, who spoke in the last week of Octo­ ber, a month after the incident in Bristol, may yet allow Stokes to return midway through the Ashes series. But the balance of probabil­ity is that England will have to defend the Ashes without him.

IT WILL BE AN ONEROUS TASK. As a pure batsman, Stokes is easily good enough to make England’s side; he has added brain to his brawn, and incorporated ballast without diluting his power. If his bowling is less valuable — he averages 2.5 wickets a Test— Stokes is a rare fourth seamer capable of bending a match to his will. His reverse swing did so in the last Ashes, when the urn was sealed with Stokes’ 6­36 at Trent Bridge. And it did so again in his very last Test, when he hooped the ball both ways to lay waste the West Indies with 6­22. Add in the force of his personality, his adroit slip catching, and that all facets of his game are well­suited to Australia — as he proved by scoring England’s sole century of the 2013/14 whitewash, and backing it up with a six­wicket haul in Sydney — and Stokes is England’s most valuable cricketer.