Boria Majumdar in Manchester
As Shubman Gill and KL Rahul were putting together their extraordinary resistance on the fourth evening, there was one thing that went in their favour. Ben Stokes wasn’t bowling. He has been England’s man with the magic wand. Each time his team has needed something, the captain has stepped up. Today was no different.
Make no mistake, he was in pain. Each time he bowled, he immediately had his right hand on his hamstring and was also seen feeling the shoulder on occasions. But as is the case with Stokes, he kept bowling. Relentless energy and ability, he nailed it with the wicket of KL with a ball that was unplayable because it kept low. Some might say, why did KL not play forward, but the truth is he did offer the correct stroke. That the ball would not rise as expected was not something anyone can play for. For Stokes, it was just reward for a spell full of effort and commitment.
An extraordinary athlete, Stokes is always in the game and what you get from him is 100 per cent sense of duty each time he steps out for his team. Blessed with incredible talent, Stokes has honed his skills over the years and is in that zone now where he can hardly put a foot wrong on a day he gets going. And more important is his clarity of mind. Soon after coming out on Day 5, one could see him start to warm up. He knew the KL-Gill partnership was the key and had India played it out till lunch, things could just get difficult for England. He did not want to leave things for the Oval. This has been a match England dominated and the skipper wanted to close it out here itself.
Gill and KL, who stood firm last night and weren’t really flustered, were all of a sudden shaken by the uneven bounce and that’s what Stokes could do with his understanding of the situation. In effect, he yet again changed the momentum with his counterpunch, after having helped his team stretch their lead past 300 by making 141 runs.
Also Read: India vs England: Ben Stokes the difference between the two sides
Stokes as an athlete has seen it all. In 2016 at Eden Gardens he was at his lowest when he conceded four sixes against Carlos Brathwaite in the last over of the 2016 T20 World Cup final. Him hunching low in the middle of the pitch shell shocked was a photograph that went viral. England were defeated by a resurgent West Indies and Stokes was the villain.
For many, that could have been the end of the road. The scarring is not easy to overcome when you are being castigated day in and out. Not so Stokes. He came back from the dead and made himself the greatest all-round cricketer of his era.
He has won some incredible Test matches for England and a World Cup final. He continues to do extraordinary things just like what he did at Old Trafford today when England were feeling the heat having not picked a wicket for five hours.
As captain, there is nothing that he can’t do on the cricket pitch and that’s what makes the current England team what it is. Stokes is the alpha male and his team knows it. He inspires and carries the team with him. That’s Stokes and that’s what has been the difference all series.
While Gill too has batted like a man possessed — four hundreds don’t come easy — Stokes has just been too good purely as a skipper. And maybe, that’s why it is just good to accept that you played against an athlete who was just too good. That’s the reality and that’s what explains the scoreline.
In the end, Stokes lost it a bit, when he offered to shake hands but Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar rightly refused. You don’t get a chance to score a Test hundred at the drop of a hat. Also, with final Test starting in four days, India rightly took the opportunity to run England ragged.
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