Injury-hit Ben Stokes carries England yet again as he clobbers 80 against Aussies to give fighting chance in Ashes
IT must be pretty tiring to carry an entire cricket team on your shoulders when neither of your legs are functioning properly.
Luckily for England, Ben Stokes doesn’t do exhaustion.
There are many remarkable things about this England captain – including his skill, courage, cricketing intelligence and inspiring leadership.
But perhaps most remarkable of all, his extremely high pain threshold.
At Lord’s last weekend, Stokes hammered 155 on one leg and England still lost.
Here at Leeds yesterday, he clobbered 80 after suffering an injury to his right buttock to go along with a chronic problem with his left knee – and England might well lose again.
In fact, his work during this series could still go down as the most heroic contribution ever produced in a whitewashed team.
And that makes Stokes even more incredible still. He does all this stuff without the motivation of any reasonable levels of hope. And he can barely walk either.
At lunch yesterday, England were sliding towards a miserable defeat.
After a succession of dismal dismissals they were 142-7, trailing by 121.
Out came Mark Wood, who bowls at 96.5mph and bats marginally quicker than the speed of sound.
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Wood heaved his first ball from Mitchell Starc over midwicket for six and trooped back seven balls later with 24 runs to his name.
Then Stokes, England’s creaking, flame-haired Hercules, flicked a switch and produced another display of highly-selective carnage.
It was the controlled aggression which should be the template for Bazball but which no other England batsman has seemed capable of mastering during these Ashes.
Stokes – who also has problems with his fingers and a toe and makes your average jump-jockey’s injury history look tame – hammered four consecutive fours off Starc and Pat Cummins.
Then he clouted Todd Murphy for five maximums before the spinner finally had him caught on the long-on boundary.
Stokes had survived an umpire’s-call DRS review for leg-before against Scott Boland on 10. He kept falling over at the crease and he hobbled every time he was called upon to run.
But unlike any other English cricketer, this man strikes terror into Australians.
To them, all those injuries must make him seem more awesome still, when he is in full flow.
They add to his aura of Hammer-horror-villain superhumanity.
Is this bloke for real?
England had scored 95 runs in 10.2 overs since lunch, their first-innings deficit was a manageable 26 and Stokes had conjured hope from a crisis once more.
With extreme predictability, Stuart Broad – that bunny boiler extraordinaire – dismissed David Warner, for the second time in seven deliveries in this Third Test.
And after a patient partnership between Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne sent England to the brink of no-hope again, Moeen Ali convinced Labuschagne and Steve Smith to gift him their wickets, as he reached 200 Test victims.
Labuschagne – who had just been dropped by Jonny Bairstow during one of Wood’s lightning bursts – was caught having a horrible slog-sweep, before Smith, who’d scored just two, chipped one to mid-wicket.
Bairstow, still raging from his Lord’s ordeal, gave Smith a cheery ‘See you later, Smudge’ and the Aussie ratbag spat back in disgust.
The England keeper is having a pretty horrible series and, in truth, his sledging was little better than his keeping or his recent batting.
After Chris Woakes removed the immovable Khawaja – Bairstow finally holding on to one – England were back on even terms.
At stumps, they trailed by 142, with the Aussies grinding it out at two and a half runs an over.
England love a run chase and Wood rattled through the Australian tail with indecent haste the first time around.
They may be supping in the last-chance saloon in this series but they remain thirsty and it isn’t chucking-out time just yet.
There is heavy rain forecast for tomorrow but some time on Sunday this match is likely to come to an enthralling climax for the third Test in a row.
But for Stokes, England wouldn’t have come close either at Leeds or at Lord’s.
Their batting in the morning session had been atrocious.
Here were the soft dismissals of Bazball, without any of the fast-scoring pyrotechnics.
Joe Root, the least culpable of the four England batsmen to go, nicked off to a Pat Cummins peach from the second delivery of the day.
Bairstow played a horrible swish at a wide one from Starc and Smith snaffled him at second slip – Australia having caught five out of five behind the wicket, in stark contrast to England’s efforts.
Moeen and Stokes poked and prodded it around for an hour before the former – Mowing Ali – had a shocking heave at a short ball from Cummins and was caught at deep backward square.
Woakes struck one six and was then caught behind having a horrible swish in the final over before lunch.
At the interval, every Englishman in the ground was filled with despair.
Except for Stokes, who doesn’t do despair, doesn’t do exhaustion and doesn’t do pain.