Ben Stokes

[Durhamfootman]

i search for cinema until around 1975 every single day

[Arthur Crabtree]

Should have called it Cinema Before Scarlett Johansson.

[bigfluffylemon]

Nice article here about England's great allrounders.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id ... allrounder

The conclusion that Botham is still the greatest should be no surprise. But I would say that Stokes has already surpassed Flintoff, and given he's only 28, has the potential to scale even more heights.

[GarlicJam]

With their respective batting and bowling career averages not so wildly different, the one thing that really stands out for me is the number of Michelles that Botham got.

This suggests two things to me: one is that he was much more of an impact player, and the second is that he must have had a lot of bad/ineffective performances with the ball for their career averages to be so similar.

Strike rate for the bowlers might be a more telling stat?

[Arthur Crabtree]

Botham was amazing for about four years. And then went into a long decline. Freddie was superb for about three years, then was mostly injured. Stokes hasn't quite been at the peak level of either I don't think, and certainly not for as long as three or four years. If he keeps up the standard of the last year, maybe we can have a deal.

Freddie is probably England's greatest ever ODI bowler and would be one of the first names down for an all time England ODI side. But Stokes is the best bat in ODIs of the three as a batter.

Stokes is the best fielder of the three.

[meninblue]

Ben gets another ton, this time in test against SA. Well played .

[alfie]

Botham was amazing for about four years. And then went into a long decline. Freddie was superb for about three years, then was mostly injured. Stokes hasn't quite been at the peak level of either I don't think, and certainly not for as long as three or four years. If he keeps up the standard of the last year, maybe we can have a deal.

Freddie is probably England's greatest ever ODI bowler and would be one of the first names down for an all time England ODI side. But Stokes is the best bat in ODIs of the three as a batter.

Stokes is the best fielder of the three.

OK , Arthur : I am holding you to account for those four dropped catches

[Arthur Crabtree]

I'm sure I read it somewhere.

[meninblue]

Good innings of 176 after England were in trouble at 81/3 with Joe gone and no proper specialist reliable batsmen to stop the collapse. Very welll batted.

[bigfluffylemon]

Stokes to take an indefinite break from cricket to focus on his mental health.

Sounds ominous - when this happened to Trott and Tresco, they never made it back. All the best to him, hope he can recover.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Wonder if he'd be better off not playing all formats. Though I don't feel like he's been playing that much at all recently.

Maybe it's not a problem related to the game at all, but it is noticeable that more people now seem to find they need a break from their sport.

[Durhamfootman]

so much for the rotation policy. It's a relentless, brutal schedule for England players.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Probable that covid restrictions are having an influence.

England players rumoured to be thinking of pulling out of the Ashes next winter if their WAGS can't travel.

I haven't looked at any numbers, but I don't think any England player has played a lot of cricket over the past year.

Is it time to get rid of central contracts and pick teams based on series availability and allow players to pick and choose?

Are centrally contracted players turning up for IPL but pulling out of England series. If so, central contracts are a waste of time.

But then, once/if things return to normal, everything will change again.

[sussexpob]

The acceptance of mental health issues in sport has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, so I can only hope that whatever issues Ben is struggling with have been picked up and acted upon quickly. In the past I guess others were in the firing line for too long with problems and unable to speak out or admit they needed to walk away, and those problems snowballed into career ending ones. I have confidence in the system and understanding of these issues that players can nowadays talk about it, so hopefully this will be something Ben can recover from and get back out on the field as soon as possible.

Sending all my best wishes to Ben and fingers crossed for his speedy and complete recovery. And hopefully this will jolt the ECB into thinking long and hard about the schedules they force their players through - there is too much cricket played, we need to reduce it across the board.

[Durhamfootman]

I agree with those sentiments entirely

In some ways Gentle Ben is luckier than most. His name will be second on the team sheet behind Root in the tests and Morgan in the ODI's... maybe 3rd in the T20's, so he doesn't have to worry about his long term future in England plans if he takes some time out to get himself back in a good place. Others risk losing their place and their international career to somebody else if they aren't in the mix all the time and so may not feel quite so able to do the same