Cricket-Match-Special ... A forum for discussion

Arthur Crabtree wrote:Noticed that over the past two years, Leach is the top wicket taker in Tests. Not a great average though.

I suspect that bowler averages will continue to worsen over the next year. Stokes wants bowlers to send down wicket taking deliveries, not bowler average protecting deliveries. He also dangles carrots in front of batsmen by leaving gaps in the field and asking them to try and hit through them in his pursuit of wickets. So far it's working.... 19 innings in the field since he became captain and 190 wickets taken

Durhamfootman wrote:

Arthur Crabtree wrote:Noticed that over the past two years, Leach is the top wicket taker in Tests. Not a great average though.

I suspect that bowler averages will continue to worsen over the next year. Stokes wants bowlers to send down wicket taking deliveries, not bowler average protecting deliveries. He also dangles carrots in front of batsmen by leaving gaps in the field and asking them to try and hit through them in his pursuit of wickets. So far it's working.... 19 innings in the field since he became captain and 190 wickets taken

The carrot he is dangling over Leach's bowling is a big one. Maybe Leach is more suited to Root's captaincy.

Root (c) econ 2.86 s/r 66.8
Stokes (c) econ 3.34 s/r 72.37

The cult of personality around Ben Stokes is quite baffling at some stages. Ben has just been announced as the ICC test cricketer of the year..... He averaged 8th best out of England's cricketers with both bat and ball this year.

For all bowlers in 2022, he ranked 23 out 29 for average on those to take 20 wickets. 5 players below him are all form the worst ranked side, and his wicket average is above...

For batters, he ranked 28 in average for all players to play at least 10 innings.... Average of 35 with bat, 31 with ball for the year..... neither of these are particularly noteworthy.

I'd have thought several of his team mates, or someone like Babar Azam, would have been far more deserving of this award

I mean, you could argue Ben Stokes is an all-rounder, but his importance to the team is far more slanted towards batting. To compare him to someone like Flintoff, he takes far less wickets per match, and 26 wickets in 20 bowling innings feels like its barely clinging onto that boundary between batter who bowls/all rounder. Joe Root took 10 wickets for instance, and he's just a batter that occasionally turns his arm over.

So it doesn't feel like there is value in saying his all rounder contributions trump more impressive specialists.

he's got it for his captaincy, I think. It's his impact on test cricket more than just his numbers, surely? After all he's pretty much turned test cricket on its head and probably for the better. You won't find me arguing against the award.

Stokes named leading cricketer in the world by Wisden, again.

After transforming the England test team and leading them to victory in the T20 World Cup, seems thoroughly deserved IMO.

third time in four years

I mean...

Stokes retired from ODI in 2022 after a woeful performance in 5 matches.... like really bad

In T20s, he's seemingly remembered as the man winning the WC for England.... but wasnt in the team of the tournament, and wasnt man of the match in the final he supposedly single handedly won.

In tests, he didnt have a noteworthy performance with bat or ball. Not to say he was bad, but hes ranked 5th in the world in test all rounders (and not ranked in the top 20 for either limited overs format). Even someone like Ravi Jadejja in 3 matches took as many wickets, at 15 runs less, and added 80 per innings with the bat with as many centuries....

Its an individual performance award, his captaincy should have nothing to do with it. Joe Root won 1 in 17 tests and won the award the year before.

I dont think the award is justified

England's results have gone into a dramatic U turn since Stokes became skipper. Why is that? It feels too sudden and extreme to be a normal fluctuation of outcomes, or catching the opposition at the right time.

Arthur Crabtree wrote:England's results have gone into a dramatic U turn since Stokes became skipper. Why is that? It feels too sudden and extreme to be a normal fluctuation of outcomes, or catching the opposition at the right time.

I think its easy to forget that England's previous administration were a joke. We had a national selector picked for the job because he wrote a book about baseball and happened to open the batting once with the Director, a captain who was uninspiring, a head coach way out of his depth, his junior coaches smoking cigars in hotels at 6am and getting arrested, a Director of Cricket who's landmark idea was retiring two generational quality players and replacing them with dross.... I can go on.

Of course, the purge of all these idiots no doubt contributed. How much of this rapid turn around can be solely attributed to one person or the other is up for debate, and in many ways impossible. Even between McCullum and Stokes, who came up with the idea and implemented it? I mean, it was tagged "Bazball"... which suggests the press think its more MuCullum.

Stokes did captain the side in 2020 in Root's absence, and I believe we lost to a West Indies side that was the worst ranked team to have taken a test in England in over 20 years. So one would suggest if Stokes was such an instant tactical, inspirational genius, even then he couldnt do it without other people.

Of course, I really like his style of captaincy. Its so uncomplicated.

All of this is by the wayside.... its an individual award for best player.

Arthur Crabtree wrote:England's results have gone into a dramatic U turn since Stokes became skipper. Why is that?

maybe because they're now led by the man named as the leading cricketer in the world for 3 of the last 4 years?

So far, this England team under Ben Stokes has troubled India enough this series.

One thing i don't get is why Joe Root bowled more than specialist spinner in 1st test. Yes, he took wickets, but i think he was given the ball ahead than some other specialist spinners, wasn't he? I didn't watch most part of the 1st test so maybe some match situation justified this approach. Tom Hartley, Jack Leach and Rehan Ahmed must be having more variety than he does. Well England won it though even if it did not fit the approach most captains would have opted for.

Joe Root needs to bat like Joe Root. He is like Alaistair Cook, Rahul Dravid, Kane Williamson, Chet Pujara who will bore the fielders to death with massive individual score. But he is getting out playing reverse sweep, that too attempting it against Jasprit Bumrah . . Great for India though that a player of his test class is totally out of form. One reason Ben must be surely worried about (Joe's form) apart from winning the toss in next test.

Compensating poor batting form with his bowling though, but certainly that's the job of someone else

Very bad series for Ben Stokes. Yet could not drive home the advantage. Also had toss in his favor having won three of them out of 5. There were 4 debutants in this Indian batting lineup. Rohit (59tests) and Shubman (25 tests), Yashasvi had played only 4 before this series. S Bharat had played 5 before this series. Rajat Patidar, Sarafaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel made debut in this test series. So this was most inexperienced Indian lineup in my watching time i feel.

As a batsman too he scored just 199 from 10 innings he batted in this series. Given that he bowled just one spell (due to workload management post injury) and just 1 win as a captain, he has had a very bad series personally in all roles he could contribute in.

Yes won't deny Stokes has had a rotten series. He was put under a lot of pressure - as expected - by an excellent Indian team , who have been unbeatable at home for a long time now ; and it seems that pressure impacted severely on both his batting (as shown more by the timid nature of a number of his dismissals than even the low scores) ; and - eventually - on his decision making in the field. He deservedly won praise for getting good results from a very inexperienced attack in the early games ; but as the series progressed he seemed to lose his generally good instinct for knowing when and how to attack.
Handling of the bowlers and field settings in the latter part of the first Indian innings , and again at the start of their second , in that pivotal fourth match was questionable - and arguably responsible (along with some excellent batting by Jurel , of course) for that match slipping away from England after they'd established what ought to have been a winning position. That's not the sort of mistake he has previously tended to make. I can't help but think the Third Test debacle somehow sapped his usual confidence ; and getting that back , despite the dispiriting end to this series , will be vital for him and his team when they resume in a few months.
The only good thing coming from this tour for Ben was that he got back to bowling , albeit briefly. And hasn't lost his golden arm touch... A bit more rest available now so we can probably expect to see him resume a proper all rounder role for the West Indies Tests - which might well help the rest of his game : I don't doubt the frustration of being unable to help his side with the ball has contributed to the aforementioned pressure over these recent weeks.

As always , his journey should be interesting to observe.