Loyalty over common sense: Stokes’ decision-making contributed to England’s woe

Ben Stokes must sometimes feel like a modern Atlas, the man condemned to hold up the sky for eternity.

So oppressive is the burden of propping up this England team, with its capacity for crumbling from every conceivable position, that he is ending his Ashes tour not just mentally scrambled but physically broken.

Ben Stokes finishes the Ashes a beaten, and injured, man.Credit: Getty Images

While Jacob Bethell’s wonderful century brought a luminous ray of sunshine here, the captain hobbled through the final act in torment, his hopes of bending this Sydney Test to his will dashed by a groin injury borne of bowling himself into the ground.

The decision by Stokes to bat was valiant, given the agony from his right adductor, which made him wince in pain even as he ducked under Marnus Labuschagne’s half-trackers.

Five balls were all he could survive, with his movement so restricted that an attempted cut shot off Beau Webster caught a thick edge and flew into the hands of Steve Smith, leaping sharply to his left.

Stokes’ body language as he trudged off spoke volumes. Where usually he would seek to play the colossus, resisting any negative signal even in parlous situations, he looked for the first time like a beaten man, the sun setting on a gruesome series and perhaps on the team he has helped create.

As if it were not galling enough to contribute scores of nought and one, there was the prospect of having to convalesce once more from a significant injury.

While the received wisdom is that he will carry on as captain in the absence of any credible alternatives, Stokes turns 35 in June and cannot muscle through the pain barrier indefinitely.

A touch over 27 overs proved far too cumbersome a workload in the Sydney sunshine, and as Smith flicked another one of his deliveries off the pads he pulled up sharply, knowing the damage was serious. Tossing the ball to Bethell to complete the over, he walked off biting his shirt collar and facing a fraught inquisition.

Stokes’ leadership is perhaps the most complex subplot of the past eight weeks Down Under, defying easy conclusions. On the surface, he has been the model captain, exhorting his players in forlorn causes and rebuking them where necessary, as when Jofra Archer had the cheek to ask for field placements to change in Adelaide despite bowling short and wide.

Ben Stokes lasted five balls on day four in Sydney.Credit: Getty Images

He has set an example, too, determinedly blocking in Brisbane as a pointed contrast to the top order’s habit of driving on the up. But in a curious sense, he has also sown some of the seeds of his side’s demise.

Take the dross served up in this fifth Test by Matthew Potts and Brydon Carse. It was their inaccuracy and inconsistency, shipping 271 runs between them in 52 overs, that meant Stokes had to keep charging in even as his body was screaming for mercy.

But then, whose fault was it that these two were leading England’s seam attack in the first place? Potts and Carse are Stokes’ boys, his sidekicks at Durham. It is only out of myopic allegiance that Stokes has continued throwing the new ball to Carse, often all at sea in his line and length.

And as for the inclusion of Potts, parachuted in from a relegated county side and without a Test appearance to his name for a year, it smacks of loyalty trumping any trace of common sense.

Stokes is also struggling badly with the bat, and not just when he is nursing a groin problem. He has two half-centuries in Australia but also six single-digit scores, for an average of 18.4 and at a relatively snail-like strike rate of 36.5.

He has bowled with relentless heart, his 15 wickets keeping England afloat in passages of play where they threatened to sink altogether, but the mental image of the all-powerful all-rounder, forever hauling his team out of the fire, is starting to look threadbare.

It is highly unlikely that we will see Stokes play any active role on the final day, with Bethell, the poster-boy of the moment, confirming that he is incapable of bowling.

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As such, the verdicts on his performances on this Ashes tour, the series that could have defined him, are forming already.

At face value, he has been beyond reproach in his attitude, refusing to appear crestfallen and only showing some belated flashes of the old temper when Labuschagne gave him back-chat once too often.

Many of his decisions, however, have been open to question. Quite apart from the unbreakable bond with Carse, why did he leave his go-to seamer fielding in Sydney throughout a roasting day three at extra cover, in the full glare of the sun for hours and potentially depleting his energy reserves even further?

This was just one symptom of scattergun thinking. Another was his choice to bowl seven overs before the second new ball, needlessly risking exhaustion.

All too predictably, he paid the price, with a body held together with duct tape eventually giving way. Worn down by his own martyrdom and by the deficiencies of others, Stokes has taken himself to breaking point and beyond.

Telegraph, London

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