![England's captain Ben Stokes makes an unsuccesful appeal for a leg before wicket (LBW) decision against West Indies Jason Holder during play on the second day of the first Test cricket match between England and West Indies at Lord's Cricket Ground in London on July 11, 2024](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/cricket/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000385241195_17207260821320_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqnB5KCN8e-Nd7r4sOTGq0_8uVxqN5WOko-6Mk9Nx9yuo.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Many faces of Ben Stokes the bowler as he crashes through 200th Test wicket
England captain the third man to reach 200 wickets and 6000 runs in Tests after Jacques Kallis and Sir Garfield Sobers
![England's captain Ben Stokes makes an unsuccesful appeal for a leg before wicket (LBW) decision against West Indies Jason Holder during play on the second day of the first Test cricket match between England and West Indies at Lord's Cricket Ground in London on July 11, 2024](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/cricket/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000385241195_17207260821320_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqnB5KCN8e-Nd7r4sOTGq0_8uVxqN5WOko-6Mk9Nx9yuo.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Two hundred Test wickets. It was once a haul so mighty that it eluded titans like Jim Laker, Wes Hall and Keith Miller.
Now, the multiplication of Tests – for a privileged few nations, at least – means that the milestone has not quite got the same lustre. But when Ben Stokes trapped Kirk McKenzie lbw on the second evening at Lord’s to reach his 200th, it was reward for a bowler of rare adaptability, and even rarer heart.
Stokes’s most celebrated deeds as a Test cricketer have come with the bat: the outlandish double century in Cape Town, the Headingley heist in 2019 and the near-encore at Lord’s last year. Even before he was captain, Stokes was often picked as a specialist batsman.
Compared to Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff, his predecessors as great Test allrounders, Stokes has a strong claim to being the best batsman, but also the worst bowler. But this status shouldn’t obscure Stokes’s qualities with the ball. His journey to 200 Test wickets has been a triumph for the many faces of Ben Stokes the bowler.
Swing
The landmark wicket showed perhaps Stokes’s best guise: as a swing bowler. Maintaining an upright wrist, he tilts the seam towards where he wants the ball to curve, and then pitches the ball up in the direction that he wants it to swing, normally away from right-handers. To Kirk McKenzie, the angle was the same; as the batsman is left-handed, the effect was to swing the ball back into his pads. Stokes’s unusually wide release point on the crease exaggerates this effect, creating an awkward angle that renders his deliveries hard to leave.
Wicket number 200 followed the same template of Stokes’s most devastating spells. When England regained the Ashes in 2015, their decisive victory was completed by Stokes taking 6-36; against West Indies at Lord’s in 2017, he looted 6-22, swinging the ball in both directions. In conditions most conducive to swing, it is common for Stokes to get more swing than anyone else, even James Anderson. His capacity to move the ball laterally is why England successfully used him as an opening bowler when they won the T20 World Cup two years ago.
If his career had not coincided with those of Anderson, Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes, Stokes might have been deployed more as a swing bowler: the role that suits his skills best. Instead, Stokes has embraced a role as England’s bowling Polyfilla, filling in the cracks left elsewhere.
Reverse swing
Sometimes, this has meant locating reverse swing: an art for which Stokes is ideally-suited, with his away swingers now homing in on the stumps. Such reverse swing secured England a fraught victory in Chittagong in 2016; in Asia, Stokes averages just 29.5.
When the pitch has gone flat and the rest of the attack cannot locate any movement, it has been the cue for Stokes to be summoned, cast as England’s enforcer. In this mode, he bowls short and spears the ball into the batsman’s body with a packed on side field. The lack of pace in the rest of England’s attack has often forced Stokes into this role, sometimes to his detriment.
In the 2021-22 Ashes, he bowled long spells with six men stationed on the leg side; that series, he bowled 196 balls that bounced on the first half of the wicket, which leaked 179 runs and took only one wicket. For all the value of Stokes’s bouncer as an alternative tactic, England have sometimes been too keen to push him into this role, as if forgetting his more conventional skills.
Bloody-mindedness
Yet Stokes’s greatest value to England as a bowler is not so much what he does with the ball as how long he can do it for. In high octane moments, as long as his body allows, Stokes’s bowling is a triumph of sheer bloodymindedness. The prelude to his heist at Headingley in 2019 was a feat almost as remarkable: Stokes bowled a spell of 24.2 overs, broken only by a three-ball break.
Against India in 2018 and Cape Town 2020, Stokes’s gruelling spells only ended once victory had been sealed. But such exertions have come at a cost: two years in which he has rarely been fully fit to bowl. Now, Stokes has once again provided what all teams crave: five frontline bowlers.
![Ben Stokes of England in delivery stride during day two of the 1st Rothesay Test Match between England and West Indies at Lord's Cricket Ground on July 11, 2024 in London, England](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/cricket/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000385233685_17207262042460_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqCzzynHaCeECVyd3jmuC6_WV2kQ3Hw69uKGhIXomFyOg.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Even more than his two wickets, perhaps the best sign of Stokes’s bowling on the second day at Lord’s was how much he could do of it. Stokes’s spell of ten overs straight was all without his dreaded limp, even if English fans might have preferred the captain to be a little gentler on himself. Swing and stamina, together: here were the two best aspects of Stokes the bowler combined.