Recently, Ben Stokes and I intersected after midnight.

At talkSPORT, Matt Prior, Jon Norman and I chatted about how Jacob Bethell was not a number three, and how he really should be batting down the order. It was a fairly normal discussion, well for me at least.

Then talkSPORT put up a clip on Instagram, and next thing you know, it found a late-night doomscrolling former England captain.

For what happened next, how about we let social media member Kieran Hyde explain:

“So talkSPORT have put a clip out today, and it’s Jarrod Kimber talking about Jacob Bethell. He’s a cricket journalist for talkSPORT, and in the video he says that Jacob Bethell looks a million dollars when the pitch is flat and the ball’s not doing anything. But when the ball’s doing something, he looks like he can’t hit to run.

Who’s that repost? Ben Stokes reposting that?”

Yes, this actually happened.

“By Stokes reposting this, I think we’re all very clear that Key and McCullum were very pro-Bethell at number three. Let’s throw him in. While Stokes was probably, ‘Let’s keep Pope in. He’s done the job before. We’re gonna keep Pope.’”

This is a valid theory, but we must always remember Hanlon’s Razor, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

What I think happened is probably Stokes was up late at night looking at Instagram well beyond his former team’s curfew, and he accidentally shared the video.

Because it is very possible that Stokes just pressed the wrong button on his phone. It is also possible that he, like me, is obsessed with this new trend.

It feels like a new world order. Right now, teams feel like they have to enter a match with a real fifth bowler. We want wickets, as many of them as we can stuff in our pockets, fuck the consequences. But there is an aftermath from this; we are seeing the death of the specialist number six, and the sacrifice of young batters at three.

***

Six batters, four bowlers and a keeper, 6/4/1. The two greatest teams ever, Australia and the West Indies dominated cricket with this.

Yet weirdly, the ideal team is not this. That is when you can find an allrounder who can transform your team into six batters, five bowlers and one keeper. 6/5/1. Mathematically, this makes no sense, but that is what Jacques Kallis, Ian Botham and Garfield Sobers make it feel like. They bend the reality of cricket.

It is why, for generations, teams have searched for these unicorns, despite the fact that only one player has averaged less than 30 with the ball and 40 plus when batting.

The 1980s and 90s revolution into keepers who bat has actually led us to a different formation, 6 batters, 5 bowlers, or 6/5.

Of course, there is an extreme version of that. Some of Gautam Gambhir’s recent lineups for team India have been - 5 batters, three all rounders, three bowlers, which in his head is 8 batters and six bowlers (8/6). But really ends up being more like seven batters and four bowlers.

South Africa pioneered lineups like this more than 100 years ago and did it again in the 90s after their readmission. They had Kallis, Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener, Brian McMillan and whatever Nicky Boje was. Bob Woolmer was their coach, with a big old brain, and again the idea was that they had eight batters and six bowlers, but again the reality didn’t quite match that. It was more like 7/4.

And these eight-batter lineups aren’t often that successful, as you end up with part-timer bowlers who are moonlighting as frontline, or worse, so many bowlers that no one ever gets into rhythm at all.

What modern teams have worked out, though, is that you need to take 20 wickets to win a match. Which sounds weird, but was not always the aim in heavy draw eras. The priority in cricket wasn’t to win but rather to not lose.

Compare that to the gambling you see in the WTC era, as teams attack for results. And the final change is back-to-back Tests. Four bowlers get tired far quicker. Plus it allows bowlers to deliver closer to their max zone for more spells. Teams don’t like to rest their best bowlers for games; they would rather use them within.

That means selection has changed, and sides ensure they have a decent fifth bowling option in most matches.

With an average of 35, this has been the best decade for the fifth bowlers since the 1950s. Even Australia, who didn’t feel the need to have a fifth bowler in the 2000s, have regularly fielded Mitchell Marsh, Cameron Green, Beau Webster and sometimes multiple all-rounders in the same game. This is really something Australia haven’t done since the 1960s.

Other teams have gone extreme at times; England with Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali, Sam Curran and Chris Woakes, and India with Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Washington Sundar.

But the fun one is South Africa with Wiaan Mulder and Marco Jansen. Even though Jansen doesn’t always bowl in the fifth position, his ability (or at least the experiment) to bat in the top seven allowed South Africa to have five genuine bowling options.

That is all anyone wants now, but it was not always the case.

In a traditional Test team since World War II, the best batters occupied the top four - often specialists. The wicketkeeper batted at seven, because unlike now teams actually used to pick keepers who could keep. Leaving numbers five and six as the two weakest specialist batters in the side.

That structure limited bowling options and made taking 20 wickets harder, but it came with a significant benefit: it gave younger batters a sheltered entry point into Test cricket. A team could blood a promising player at five or six, let them acclimatise for a year or two, and push them up the order once they were ready or if a spot opened up. Think of it as a graduate programme: you identify potential early, invest in it, and trust that in time they will take over from an ageing top four.

Mark Butcher batted at number six once, and couldn’t believe how much easier it was. Most players say the same. Old ball and tired bowlers make it the easiest and most forgiving positions to bat.

It isn’t a job without complications; the second new ball often appears, batting with the tail is a skill, big totals are hard to find and they often have to bat to the theme of the game more than top order players.

So there are issues there, but let’s look closer at them.

Since 2000, the median entry point for a number six batter is around the 40th over. By the time new ball arrives, a number six is well and truly in. This is not the issue people think it is.

Batting with the tail can be tough, but it’s rare that a number six is actually in with ten and eleven. And batting with seven, eight and nine is actually fairly normal. Number sixes bat 84% of the time with the top seven, 13% with number eight and nine and only 3% with number ten and eleven.

Obviously, it is true that players don’t score as many huge totals at six, and for averages, that is not ideal. However, they get double the amount of not outs as openers. So it does even out.

But if you bat at six, you are the least likely player to convert a start to a hundred of the batters. And by a lot. This is precisely why you don’t want your best bat there. They can’t maximise their scores, whereas at three and four they can.

For years, the number six spot was used in two ways. For a player with a second skill like keeping or bowling, or as a graduate position for young players coming through.

Just under half of the highest scorers ever at positions three and four began their careers batting at five or six in their first twenty innings. Or, to rephrase that, nearly half of the great number threes and fours in Test history started at a position that teams are now handing to all-rounders and wicket-keepers.

We didn’t include openers in this list because the adjustment to Test cricket is less steep for them. The way first-class teams are set up, the openers face the opposition’s best bowlers. Whereas, for a number three or four, the drop in quality from the new ball bowlers to the first and second change in first class cricket is far more pronounced than it is at Test level. That is precisely why they needed the cushion of batting at six to find their feet.

Let’s take Ricky Ponting and Virat Kohli as examples. Both were already batting at four for Tasmania and Delhi respectively.

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If you watched the football World Cup at all, chances are, you saw the living statue at one stage or another. That was Lumumba Vea, a man from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He goes to football games, and then stands there as still as he can, imitating the famous statue of Congo’s first ever leader.

It’s a striking visual, no matter how you look at it. And through this World Cup, by just standing still, by getting denied entry in places, and by people talking about the politics of what he was doing, it meant the football World Cup was continuously in the conversation. Because one man stood still at a football game.

The team that he was supporting is currently ranked 41st in the world according to the FIFA rankings. This wasn’t a team that people had a lot of hopes or expectations for. They were not favourites. They were not expected to win. The best possible scenario was them doing okay in the group games. And yet so many people followed Congo because they were at a World Cup and they had this striking image on the field of what Lumumba Vea did.

Whether you like football or not, it would be hard to argue that the last World Cup we saw was actually a global event.

Now ask yourself: in cricket, do we really have those?

***

The football World Cup has 48 teams. That is a lot more than cricket has ever had, or perhaps will ever have.

There are over 200 registered teams with FIFA -- basically every UN nation in the world and a couple of others that probably aren’t even on that list. And yet, when they hold their World Cup, almost a quarter of all of those teams get a chance at playing in the biggest event in the world. You have a legitimate chance, no matter where you are from, of actually making it to the world’s biggest tournament.

I know what you’re thinking, ‘Football’s huge, right? We shouldn’t be comparing cricket to football, even if they’re the No.1 and No.2 sports in the world. There’s such a distance between them.’

So let’s try another sport.

Rugby’s next World Cup is going to have 24 teams. Their previous edition had 20. Rugby is not the second biggest sport in the world. Neither is it anywhere near the size of cricket overall, and yet they are still looking for inclusion, growth, and expansion.

It doesn’t stop there. Basketball has its own World Cup, and it has 32 teams.

The sport that you could actually compare cricket most to is ice hockey. But that is a winter sport where the vast majority of the world doesn’t even have the ice required to form some kind of team. You need a lot of facilities, multiple players, leagues, and everything that goes with it.

When you have a look at the Winter Olympics, check the sorts of countries that send people to compete in ice hockey: they’re either rich or they’re cold, and sometimes both.

And yet ice hockey is still managing 16 teams. With all due respect to the great puck, it is nowhere near the size of cricket around the world.

And that is because cricket is the second-most viewed sport. Ice hockey is not the third-most viewed either. You’d probably argue that basketball is up there, but ice hockey and rugby are a long way behind cricket. And yet, when it comes to World Cups and who they invite, they both invite more teams than cricket does.

Do these sports not like money?

Why not just get your most famous teams to play each other over and over again in an endless loop? They don’t seem to follow that model. But in cricket, we do, and we have for quite some time.

Of course, in cricket, things have to be more confusing than that. We actually have two World Cups, one of which has more than the 16 teams in ice hockey, and the other one has fewer.

In the middle of a football World Cup with 48 teams that was doing really, really well, the ICC released their information on the next cricket editions. Let’s say they’ve used some ‘creative accounting’ to make some things happen.

In T20 cricket we have 20 teams, which seems apt. In the ODI World Cup, we have 14 sides.

Previously we had four groups of five, and now we’re going to have five groups of four in the T20 edition. There are a few minor changes all the way through, but all things considered, the T20 tournament makes a lot more sense. It’s up where rugby used to be when it comes to the number of teams. It’s well above where ice hockey was.

While they haven’t taken the opportunity to bring any more sides in, they’re at least making it look like a global event by having 20 teams. Twenty seems like a decent number in modern sport.

Whereas the ODI World Cup is going to have 14 teams... except that’s a lie. Because the 50-over edition will not actually have 14 teams. It will have 12.

The reason I say this is that, yes, 14 teams will technically be invited to the World Cup. However, three teams are going to play a preliminary tournament before the World Cup. Those three teams will whittle down to one team.

So what we’re really having is a fun little qualifier just before the tournament. But those teams won’t feel like they’re at the World Cup. One of them will actually make it, and the other two will disappear before the tournament starts.

So we do not have 14 teams in the World Cup. We have 12.

To quote the Big Orange Giant: “The 14 number is completely and utterly fake.”

But there is another number that’s important here, the number three.

That is the number of times it is possible that India can play Pakistan in one World Cup, which at a certain point no longer feels like a World Cup. Twice, you’re like, “Okay, we could see how that can happen.” But if it’s three times, it feels like you are gerrymandering the entire World Cup just to get more money from one game.

There is a part of me that doesn’t mind that, as long as some of that money goes directly to the players involved. But we all know that’s not how this works.

Indian cricketers are incredibly underpaid for how famous and rich they should be, and Pakistani players are also underpaid. They are the other half of the India–Pakistan game, which is a billion-dollar game. It’s so important that we have essentially created a World Cup to make sure they can play each other three times.

I should point out that as far as I can understand for the T20 edition, there is no way that India could play Pakistan three times in that tournament.

But for the ODI edition, three games could happen.

I’m assuming that India and Pakistan will be in the same group based on the fact that they always are, and also because we rig all of these tournaments. There are no fair ballots, rankings, or seedings. We just try to make sure, as much as possible, that India play Pakistan at least once.

So if they both play in that group, they then go to another section called the Super Sevens. But in true cricket fashion, what we’re really doing with this seven-team group is essentially bringing back the original Test sides and saying, “These are the only ones you need to worry about.”

It’s going back to the old private members’ club.

Which is part of the reason why all these other sports have so many teams in the World Cup and we don’t. We set cricket up as a private members’ club, and then we decided never to let anyone into it.

So then we manufacture our World Cups. If India and Pakistan are in the same group originally, they’ll play once. Then they’ll play each other in the round of seven if they both get there.

And then there is the possibility of them meeting again in the final.

Now, it’s Pakistan, so it’s less of a chance -- but you get my general point.

***

Here’s another number for you: 111.

That is how many ICC member nations currently have cricket teams.

Yet somehow we’ve ended up with a World Cup where only 12 teams are really going to be invited to the event, and it’s possible for one team to play another three times.

How? Why? Only in cricket could we think this is okay, or normal in any way.

We have the second biggest sport in the world, and it’s still set up as a private members’ club that’s all about making as much money as possible from the same two teams playing each other as many times as possible, in part because they won’t play each other any other time.

I mean, yes, a lot of other sports are dysfunctional. Ours is uber dysfunctional.

So you end up with 12 out of 111 teams being invited to your biggest event. Sure, we’ll invite two more for the pre-party appetisers, but they’re not allowed to stay when things get fun.

And for the other tournament that we’re less interested in at the moment, we’ll invite a couple more. But largely, that is just to stop the moaning about the fact that only 12 teams are coming to the ODI World Cup.

Since this has all been about numbers, let’s finish with these ones: 2–1.

That was the score of a football game at this World Cup. At the seven-minute mark of that game, Congo scored a goal.

And it wasn’t just any goal. It was against England, the team that invented the sport. On top of that, it was in a knockout game. This was a legitimate chance for Congo to progress later in the tournament.

There have been a lot of great games played at this football World Cup, but this was certainly one of the most exciting. If for no other reason, Congo were in front of England for most of the match.

From the seventh until the 75th minute, Congo were 1–0 up against England, when Harry Kane equalised. Then, in the 86th minute, he scored again, and Congo were going home while England went through to the next round.

It was a predictable result, but nothing about the game felt that way. It was exciting and exhilarating, and I say this as a non-football fan.

So the 41st-ranked side in world football gave us this beautiful moment of a man pretending to be a statue that we were all absolutely fascinated and obsessed by. They gave us the possibility of an English loss early in the tournament, and I’m only talking about two of the highlights.

Would you like to know who the 41st-best ODI men’s cricket team in the world is? So would I. But the ICC haven’t actually sanctioned that many teams for ODIs, so we don’t know.

I can tell you that the 41st-best men’s T20 team in the world is Japan.

Luckily, there’s nothing crazy or wild going on in Japanese sport at the moment. A country that currently has the most marketable baseball player on the planet.

But when it comes to cricket, we’re not looking for that. If somehow Japan became absolutely obsessed with cricket, do you know what it would mean? More money for the sport.

We are told that these decisions are always made because of business. But they always leave out one phrase: short-term. In the long term, the other sports are pulling away. We have more fans, we have more interest -- and we have fewer teams.

At a certain point, something has to change within our sport, and we have to understand that the world means the world.

Garfield Sobers had an extra finger on each hand. Like a perfect jigsaw puzzle with a spare piece. His friends would tell him he was cheating when he played cricket because of them. One of the fingers came off when he was still young. But he had eleven when people noticed him in Barbados.

There is a feeling in some parts of the world that having extra fingers is good luck. Today, it’s something we see with artificial intelligence image generators. That fits Sobers, because if you got AI to try and make a perfect cricketer, it would be him.

Bob ‘Knocker’ White was his teammate at Nottingham. White played as a batter for a decade at Middlesex, then moved to Nottingham and remade himself into an allrounder. He finished his playing career and went into umpiring. He basically stood on professional grounds for 50 years. And he only ever saw one Sobers.

Knocker was in awe at the non-striker’s end, barely believing his luck in seeing Sobers from this close. Then he would go down and ask for tips, advice, or just an explanation of how Sobers played the last ball. The West Indian was happy to answer Knocker’s questions. But it was pointless. What Sobers could do was not transferable. Knocker was a solid professional cricketer, he could ask the right things, saw subtle changes of grip, or position on the crease. But he couldn’t be Sobers, because no one could.

He wasn’t built like normal people. That eleventh digit that people said he was cheating with, Sobers cut that off himself with catgut. He was cricketing perfection and an amateur surgeon. Not just all the pieces that you would want in a cricketer, but he had extra. Sobers could do everything.

***

Sobers was first chosen as a left-arm finger spinner. This was a little like the Steve Smith decision, as the West Indies knew he could bat. But at that stage, his bowling was more useful to them, and they thought it’d develop quicker.

Over his first few Tests, it looked like his bowling would be better. He took 4/75 the first time he bowled and added 40 across both innings in his debut Test. After 16 Tests, he hadn’t bettered those figures, and his bowling average was over 40. His batting had shown glimpses with six 50s; it was enough to keep him in the team, but not much more.

None of this was helped by the West Indies having no idea what to do with him. In his short career, he’d batted at 9, 6, 8, 7, 5, 3 and 4. Plus, he’d opened. His batting average was 34 at the age of 21.

His next innings was 365 not out. The confusing allrounder with no batting position broke the world record when only 21, with his first hundred.

Wisden described it this way: “The 21-year-old West Indies left-hander, making his first Test century in the third Test at Kingston, hit 365 not out in ten hours eight minutes, three hours twelve minutes less than Hutton took in his innings against Australia at The Oval nearly twenty years previously. Although Pakistan were handicapped by injuries to bowlers, Sobers nevertheless played a brilliant innings.”

What a way to explain the biggest score in Test history.

But this knock changed everything. He went from a bits-and-pieces player to a star.

The next year he averaged 30. He made 365 when he was still clearly in development. But the issue for the West Indies at the time was where to bat him.

These days he would be a No.4, but at that stage the West Indies had Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott - both naturals there. Five also made sense, but they had Frank Worrell too. So do you bat Sobers at three? No, that is Rohan Kanhai. All four of those batters are great. Not for just that era, but all time.

Sobers was still a project. He wasn’t as refined as them. And fitting him in was just hard. Now, what about his bowling? If you want him to bat up the order, you cannot use his second skill as much.

Sobers probably should have batted at three. And unlike other players who chose to bat lower, Sobers was batting down the order to deliver Jimmy Anderson-level overs. Are the number three stats a blip? A little, because of the 365 not out. But he also averages more than 60 at four. His mark drops down a little when batting at five and six.

We don’t have his full stats of spin and pace, but we certainly have enough to know he played pace and spin as well as each other. So he wasn’t afraid of the new ball. His speed of scoring at three or four, matched with his talent for making runs, could have made him even better than he was.

What’s incredible is that Sobers still averages the fourth-best of anyone with 5000 runs. Even though he played when he was too young, and really a bowler, batting in so many positions, rarely in the ones he was probably most suited to and bowling like a frontline specialist.

Sobers was one of the greatest batters of all time, and he could have been better.

***

Sobers was raised by his mum in a shack in Bridgetown’s Bay Land. It was formerly an area in Barbados where slaves lived and was now for the plantation workers. The local cricket club was for whites only. He was born into a world that was not for him. And he then proceeded to own it anyway.

He made his debut six years before the West Indies ever had a permanent black captain.

So when he rose, they all did. He was the collective hope and dreams of an entire region. He was a player whose greatness shone despite the world he was forced to overcome. Proof that Caribbean excellence could overcome everything.

Sobers was a cricketer, but really more of a folk hero and political icon.

But Sobers didn’t like that. He saw cricket as entertainment, and he had a professional mindset. He was going to play cricket for money, do it well, and get paid for it. So when one of those calls came from Rhodesia to play in a double-wicket competition, he went there. Saying afterwards that he knew little about the politics of what he’d done.

In fact, instead of distancing himself from the controversy, later in his career, he said that he would have happily played in South Africa had it not been for all the “publicity and criticism”.

Playing in Southern Africa was not the only issue. Sobers didn’t always want to represent the West Indies. He was the best player in the game, and was the most highly paid. But that money didn’t come from his Test team; it was from everything else.

This led to a situation where Sobers was going to turn his back on the West Indies for a club payday in English league cricket. It took Don Bradman and Richie Benaud intervening to swing him back around. “My kind of cricket is world cricket,” he says in his book. “And the jet plane makes all-year-round cricket possible for the individual world player.” Sobers was freelance eons before anyone even thought of that phrase for cricket.

So while CLR James called him, “a West Indian cricketer, not merely a cricketer from the West Indies”. It was true. He played cricket in a nearly pure West Indian style, but for him it was about making money to survive. James called him “the living embodiment of centuries of tortured history”. Sobers said, “Cricketers are entertainers”. Both were accurate.

Sobers lived by his creed, he wanted the fans to remember him. He wasn’t there to make numbers, but memories. And as he travelled the world, he went just as hard with late nights as he had when in the middle of the ground. He lived every moment, on and off the cricket field.

Sobers was West Indian cricket at its best, most dominant, stylish, and free, but he was also the worst. He put himself through an extraordinary workload. He would have been near the top of the lists for most runs and most wickets in first-class cricket had he not been playing league cricket so often. But Sobers was always batting or bowling somewhere. For money.

Politics were for other people, Sobers entertained.

***

For The Art of Batting, we had to find ways of comparing greats throughout different eras. It’s not an easy thing to compare Jack Hobbs, Virat Kohli and Garfield Sobers. Their careers are defined by the eras they play in and the pitches they end up on.

So we came up with a batting ratio method. We took all the players with 3000 runs at an average of more than 44 as a base level to give us around 80 of the best batters who ever lived statistically. And then we compared them to each other, or their era, or the pitches they batted on.

It means every player has a particular pattern. This is Sobers.

Compared to the rest of the group, he scored a lot of runs, especially for an all-rounder who was often down the order. His average ratio is obviously really high, which is not surprising. That comes down a little when you look at Sobers away. That is because he only averages 50 on the road, while almost 70 at home.

When you break that down, he still pops massively, because against England and Australia - the best bowling lineups of that era - he was awesome. In 31 matches, he averaged more than 50 combined. His mark in Australia is lower, but it doesn’t include his double hundred against them in a Rest of the World XI. He also went at basically 100 in eight Indian Tests. The great Indian quartet had not been fully formed, but Sobers went up against BS Chandrasekhar, Vinoo Mankad, Bishan Bedi and Srinivas Venkataraghavan. So it wasn’t as if he wasn’t tested.

His away record looks worse because the two places he struggled with were also probably the weakest bowling lineups, Pakistan and New Zealand. Fazal Mahmood did get him three times LBW. But really, it’s hard to take this too seriously, as he smashed the far better attacks. So I would argue his away record is actually better than it looks.

Then we get match factor. That is looking at the runs you made compared to the rest of the top six players in your matches. It allows us to understand the pitches a player has to deal with. We know that Sobers had good pitches because everyone in his side made runs. So his match factor is low. We see that for Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar, you get penalised for the fact that your teammates are good. But it does also show Sobers batted on pretty good surfaces.

However, his era was tough. So he certainly comes out of that pretty well. It is one reason he stood out: it was often a tricky period for batting, and he made it look very easy.

In percentage of runs scored, you can see despite his massive average he didn’t make a huge part of the West Indies totals. Again, that is because he had incredible teammates. Brian Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul scored really highly on this metric.

What Sobers gets a boost for, is his total years, because he really has a long career. Twenty years is huge. And then we looked at something else, a measure to separate players who made the bulk of their runs in one period, usually their prime. Any year with an average above 40 was considered a plus, and he was actually not spectacular on that metric. But any year above 50 was considered great. Look at the boost he gets there. Sobers averaged 40 plus ten times, and eight of them were over 50. And not just a little more, he never had a year of averaging in his 50s, he had 144, 78.5, 70, 99, 169 (from only one Test), 67, 75, and 76.5.

There is no period where he averages more than 50 in four consecutive years. He will average 70 in a year, and then 30s or 40s on either side. Part of this is because he played infrequently, never getting to ten Tests in a year, and only two times having eight-plus matches. So if he was like a modern player with 10-14 games, his form would look more constant. Instead, it looks like Sobers either turned up in the greatest form of anyone not Bradman, or he was not that bothered about runs.

Based on these metrics alone, we had Sobers ranked in the 20s on the original list. However, this ranking system was not built to give a final answer, but more to give us some structure to work from. We propped up openers’ records, as that is the hardest job, and downplayed people who batted in the five and six slots. In Sobers’ case, he wasn’t hiding down the order, he was placed there so they could ask him to bowl an unreasonable amount of overs.

Also we had to remember that he started in Tests at 17, as a bowler. In his early years, he’s not playing or performing like a top-order player, let alone a great one. We brought over his strike rate as well. Of the balls available to us, we know it’s around 52, which will sound low to you, but he played in the deadball era where everyone was slow. So his mark is fast for his era, because the global average was 39. He was around 36% quicker than usual. Truthfully, he could whack, but really kept the sixth gear for when he needed it, like being the first batter to hit six sixes in an over in first-class cricket. The power and speed scared people. That alone is enough to move him higher up the all time greats.

So, where did we put him in our list of the greatest Test batters of all time? Without giving you a number (buy our damn book!) we can tell you that he’s a lot higher than the 20s. His versatility, power, speed, record against the best attacks, and ability against pace and spin is like nothing we’ve seen before. Sobers should have been one of the greatest number three or fours of all time, but the West Indies had too many other pieces to fit in, and instead he had to wait around at six for someone to let him bat.

Basically, he was too talented to bat higher. That is not normal.

***

The first Tied Test had Garfield Sobers in it. He should have won the West Indies the match. He came in at No.4, and he was also the fourth wicket. The score was 239 for 4, he made 132 of them. Sadly, no one else made it past 66, and Australia had a first-innings lead of 52. Sobers took two wickets in that innings. He then failed in his next knock, and so Frank Worrell carried them, and they set Australia 233.

At 92 for 6, on the back of a Wes Hall bowling masterclass, the game appeared over. But Australia fought back, Hall kept bowling. At the other end, his partner was Sobers.

Alan Davidson had provided the muscle for the chase, Richie Benaud the fast running. For the last over, Davidson wanted strike, as he thought one big hit and this was done. Benaud just wanted them in singles. Davidson dropped one out to midwicket from Sobers’ bowling and took off. Davidson was slow, Joe Solomon picked up the ball and completed the run out. Benaud faced the last ball of Sobers’ over, but couldn’t get the strike back. Australia needed six runs off the last eight-ball over with three wickets in hand. They had Benaud at the crease, Hall was bowling, and it was 5:56 pm.

Benaud stole a leg bye to get strike back. Hall bounced him, and Benaud gloved behind.

Then it’s a scramble, Australia lose another wicket, and with three required off three and two wickets in hand, Australian left-arm seamer Ian Meckiff pulls a short delivery from Hall, and they think it’s going to the fence, before Conrad Hunte saves it. There are probably only two runs there, but the Australian keeper Wally Grout, decides to steal a third to try and win the match, and is run out.

The scores are level. There are two balls remaining. One wicket left.

Number eleven Lindsay Kline defends it on the legside. He’s not sure what to do, Meckiff just runs. Joe Solomon picks up the ball just in front of square leg, he has one stump to hit. He grew up throwing stones at mango stalks. He completes his second run out.

This is the photo by Ron Lovitt of what happened next. Test cricket’s first tie.

Frank Worrell is at the non-strikers’ end. The batter’s stumps are spread. Rohan Kanhai is flying in front of them. Wes Hall looks tired mid-pitch. Gerry Alexander smiles with one hand in the air. Lindsay Kline is looking back over his shoulder. And Sobers is behind the stumps, mid-appeal.

He came in to bat on the morning of day one of that Test, he was still bowling at dusk on day five. This was not a normal match, but for him it was. With bat, with ball, he was always in the game.

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Garfield Sobers was not a great bowler. His record doesn’t suggest that, and neither do the reports of that time. But he made himself into a very useful option.

But let’s start at the beginning, Sobers was picked as a slow left-arm orthodox bowler. The Cricketer wrote of Sobers first Test, “He is a slim young man who runs lightly up to the wicket and the arm almost touches the ear as it comes over. On what might serve as a model action for a slow left-hand bowler, he builds changes of flight and spin in the classical manner.”

England legend Ted Dexter said, “I first played him at Cambridge where he bowled left-arm orthodox spin, turning from leg. He bowled rather too fast to turn the ball much, but was very accurate and had a very well disguised quicker ball.” So he was a quick spinner who slid it through.

But when he bowled on West Indian tracks he would move from around the wicket to over, and bowl wristspin. This is from John Arlott, “Through the sixties he developed left-arm wrist-spin, turning the ball sharply and concealing his googly well.” This was his weaker skill, and he picked it up watching Denis Compton and others bowl it.

But his captain Worrell had seen him bowl medium pace and told him to take that up in the mid-60s. So he already delivered two different types of spin, and they still asked for more. How good was his seam?

Sunil Gavaskar said, “a lethal quick bowler, who could swing the ball either way.” It is worth remembering: it’s very rare for a southpaw swinger to move it in both directions. Alec Bedser rated him in his top ten medium-pace bowlers. Tom Graveney had him second - to Bedser - among post-war fast-medium bowlers. Barry Richards said, “The fastest bowling I ever faced was from Michael Holding in the 1970s, but on his day, Garry Sobers, often under-rated as a fast man because of his other talents, could be deadly. Garry had a terrifying bouncer and his left-arm bowling, combined with great variation, often made him unplayable.”

If some of those names are too old for you, that is a great Indian batter, a great English bowler, a top English batter, and a South African batter many think was the best never to play ten Tests. What I find remarkable is they all rate him, yet describe him differently.

Then you have CLR James, who talked about his ability of striking with the very new ball. Making him sound like Mitch Starc, a new-ball specialist.

Ok, so let’s run this back a little: Sobers could swing the new ball - both ways, he could bowl pretty fast when he wanted too, delivered cutters later on, had a lovely fast slidey finger-spin action, and then bowled wristspin well enough while hiding a very decent wrong’un. And he could change between any of these styles within a ball without ever looking out of place bowling in a Test.

Let us compare that to Jacques Kallis, who is also unquestionably one of the greatest cricketers ever. He can bowl with the new ball, defensively later on, and when he was inspired could deliver a few bouncers. He gives you a couple of options. Sobers can take you with swing, or if needed, a cutter, he could also bowl a fast spell of bouncers, he could bowl faster finger-spin, defensively or attacking, and if the pitch needed wristspin, he could change to that. Or just do it when you want something very different. Allrounders give you options, Sobers gave you the entire phonebook, and all with the left arm.

And yet for all this, he also really only becomes a specialist bowler after 1961 - seven years after his debut. His entire bowling was in development for ages. And so he was probably used as a left-arm finger spinner when the conditions suited. Then suddenly he’s a frontline bowler. He has five years where he averages more than 50 six-ball overs a Test, and four further years when it’s more than 43 overs a Test. That kind of load is usually what we see of spinners like Anil Kumble, Muttiah Muralidaran and Clarrie Grimmett.

Sobers did it bowling pace and spin, while also averaging nearly 60 with the bat.

Even if you include the early years he didn’t bowl much, he still delivered 38 overs per match. If you compare him to all the players with 3000 runs and 200 wickets, he bowled the sixth most overs per game. There is only one seamer ahead of him, Richard Hadlee. And the great Kiwi was a frontline bowler his entire career. Sobers wasn’t.

He also bowled more overs per game than Shaun Pollock, Stuart Broad, Imran Khan and Shakib al Hasan. But the fun one is this: Sobers bowled the same amount of overs each match as Jacques Kallis and Ben Stokes combined.

Both of them average less than Sobers, but not much. But they bowled essentially half his overs. Wouldn’t you prefer your fifth bowler to go at two runs more per wicket, but give you so many more options, and also double the overs? Yes, almost every time. And neither Stokes nor Kallis ever played as the fourth bowling option much. Sobers did it all the time. He was a frontline batter and bowler for much of his career. And the West Indies bowled him into the dirt while he was still learning some of his many crafts.

And remember this, Sobers very rarely bowled seam before 1966. From that point on, more than a decade into his career, he was asked to take the new ball more than 50% of the time. He went from not bowling seam to opening the bowling.

I said fourth-choice bowler before. He was second and third at times.

We really don’t know what he averaged for each bowling type. My guess is probably high 20s for seam, mid 30s for finger spin and over 40 when he did his wrist. We are basing that on the limited scorebooks we have, that tell us when he took his wickets. You can see how good he was up the top and struggled in the middle.

But it is just a guess. So if he hadn’t bowled spin, you can only assume his bowling record would be better. By helping the team out, his numbers were worse.

This is him against the all-rounders with 5000 runs and 200 wickets by match factor. So while Botham, Kallis and Stokes have better bowling averages, much of that is from helpful surfaces. Only Kapil Dev has a better record when looking at the pitches they bowled on. And, while the Indian was a handy batter, Sobers almost doubles his record with that.

There is no doubt he was short of being a great bowler. But the flexibility and workload he offered might qualify him as the best fifth bowler of all time. With him in the side, you could bat until number eight and still have four top-quality bowlers with six different types of bowling. Or have five bowlers, with your number six averaging almost 60.

Sober’s raw numbers suggest he’s basically slightly better than a replacement-level bowler. On every other metric, you are looking at someone who is not one nice piece, but several really useful ones.

***

John Kay wrote a book called ‘Cricket in the Leagues’ where he talks about the great stories from the heartlands of the English game. In the old days, great overseas players wouldn’t come over for county contacts, but they played for private teams or league teams.

Sobers played for Norton in the North Staffordshire and South Cheshire League in 1964. They won the league title that first year; he averaged almost 50 with the bat and eight with the ball. He didn’t make as many runs the next year, but again, his bowling average was eight. They won the title again. Norton lost in 1966 because Sobers was touring England with the West Indies. They won again in 1967 of course. He averaged more than 40 with the bat, and nine with the ball. This is similar to Michael Jordan playing in a recreational basketball competition.

But we mention it to tell this story. There was a game at one point where Sobers was bowling, and someone hit the ball back over his head. The mid-on and mid-off were chasing when they heard, “Leave it to me”. Sobers ran past both of them and took the catch. According to those there, he took it just in front of the sightscreen. We could happily discount a story like this from League cricket if it didn’t match up with everything else he has done in the field.

John Arlott once talked about his fielding by basically saying he was a great slipper, incredible at short leg, fast in the outfield with a huge arm, and awesome at cover or point.

The West Indies would use him wherever they needed their best fielder. So he would be at slip for ages, then for Lance Gibbs offspin, he’d come into short leg to catch flies. If the opposition got on top, you could move him into the ring as well.

He was not the best at any of these positions. But he was great at every one of them. This was an era in which there were not many great fielders at all, and Sobers was three of them in one man.

***

The phrase ‘allrounder’ has been bastardised so much. In early cricket it meant someone who could play as a batter or bowler. Then we changed it a little to be someone who could either bat or bowl as first choice, and added a second option. Finally, we added players who probably couldn’t really bat or bowl well enough to make a team, but their combined efforts were handy.

So today we have players who are true allrounders, specialists who can be part-time with their second option, and bits-and-pieces players. Sobers started as Sanjay Manjrekar’s favourite phrase and became a specialist batter who helped out with the ball. And then graduated to a true allrounder later in his career.

That is pretty common amongst his kind. Imran’s batting and bowling took almost a decade to fully form. Ravindra Jadeja’s batting was pretty shaky for a long time. Kallis didn’t make any runs to start his career. The Ian Botham career arc of coming into Tests fully developed in two skills is rare. Players usually take time to upskill their games. They are so talented but don’t have the time to perfect anything.

Sobers wasn’t a great spinner when he made his debut; he didn’t make any runs or even bowl seam-up. But Sobers went well beyond anything Botham did, and not by a little. We don’t really have a word that encapsulates him as a player.

AA Thomson wrote this years ago in his book ‘Cricketers of My Time’.

“When Garfield Sobers was making mincemeat of the England eleven at Headingley last year, an elderly neighbour, fuming and fretting with exasperation, addressed me bitterly:

‘This isn’t fair. They’re playing fourteen men.’

A case could be made for this contention. Just then, Sobers was the best batsman in the world, the best two fielders (on that afternoon), the best three bowlers. It seemed impossible to get him out or to steer a catch anywhere near the wicket out of his reach, and, as for his bowling, what can you do with a man who can produce every speed from fast to dead slow and is as versatile as liquorice of all sorts.

I sympathise with my neighbour but have to disagree with him. Sobers is one man, not three or four, though a remarkable one.”

It wasn’t just that Sobers was a great allrounder. Jacques Kallis, Aubrey Faulkner, Keith Miller, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Ravi Jadeja and Imran Khan are great allrounders. None of them is anywhere near as all-round as Sobers.

He was the best fielder of that bunch. Maybe Botham or Kallis are better slippers, and Jadeja better in the outfield. But Sobers was a great catcher and outfielder at once.

Miller and Imran were better seamers, but neither was able to back that up with any kind of spin. Faulkner and Jadeja couldn’t bowl pace, or change what kind of tweakers they were. Botham and Kapil were really good batters, but for lower down the order.

I have no doubt that, looking at his record, Sobers could have batted all six positions at a well-above-average record. He was as good against pace as he was spin. He could bowl whatever the pitch needed. And he moved so well, it felt like you had two fielders in one.

Sobers was the all-roundest. No player ever had this many parts at the highest level. He was everything.

***

In my family, Sobers is not a cricketer, he’s an heirloom. Everyone had a story about him. But my father had the best: he saw Sobers’ 252.

It was 1972, and my old man was a 25-year-old high school dropout and cricket lover. So to make ends meet, he would often work multiple jobs. One was as a barman at the MCG, on the mezzanine level between the Olympic and Members’ stands.

As backup gigs go, it was pretty good. But when you ask my old man about this job, he only ever talks about one experience. Australia were supposed to be playing South Africa, but it was the 1970s, and so they were replaced by the World XI. Dad was pouring beers at what was really a beer match. The MCG didn’t get big crowds for this game, never going beyond 38,000.

The batting line up was incredible, opening was the father of HD Ackerman, Hylton. But everyone else was a worldie. Sunil Gavaskar, Zaheer Abbas, Graeme Pollock, and then Sobers. But in the first innings they were rolled for 184 as Dennis Lillee took four of the names I mentioned, and later Farokh Engineer as well.

Australia were 101 up after the first innings, and when Pollock was third out for 28, Zaheer was joined by Sobers with a lead of only 44.

It was 13 years since Sobers had made his 365, 18 since his debut. This was not peak Sobers, or anything close. He averaged 20 in his last 12 months in Tests two years later.

When he came in to bat, my dad claims the bar emptied. It didn’t fill up again once that day. So my dad walked out to the balcony, and just watched the cricket. In his words, “If my boss had come in I would’ve been in strife, but I would’ve said sack me, I’m watching the cricket.”

My dad fought for every dollar he ever brought in. He regularly worked far longer and harder than he needed to. And yet on that day, it didn’t matter. He might have been an atheist, but he found his god, Garfield Sobers. The West Indian added 139, Australia had sweepers out early in his innings to slow him down. He didn’t notice them.

And my dad saw all of this, “I got paid to watch one of the best innings of all time.”

Don Bradman later declared it probably the best batting ever seen in Australia. By a man two years away from retirement, with his team about to have a heavy loss.

In that match, Sobers made 254, and the Rest of the World side won by 96 runs. But you may be confused, as before I said my dad saw Sobers’ 252. That is because he had forgotten the score. While Sobers made all the runs, it wasn’t how many that mattered, just the how.

***

Bob ‘Knocker’ White gave up asking questions eventually. Sobers couldn’t explain his genius, and Knocker was just honoured to see it.

But Knocker told me a story about a Jamaican bowling allrounder called Carlton Forbes, who was roughly the same age as Sobers, and played for Nottingham before him. Forbes took 707 first-class wickets at 25.4; he could play.

This day Sobers was facing him. “He hit Forbes in six different directions, all six balls,” says Knocker. “He went round the clock as it were and I stood there thinking, he’s taking the mickey here. He hit the first one over or past mid-off, the next one past cover, the next one he hit square on the offside for four, the next one he flicked over that square leg. The next one was over midwicket, and the last one, hit over mid-on, and I thought this is a genius. He did it just to take the mickey out of poor Carlton.”

The following year, Garfield Sobers was signed as Nottinghamshire’s overseas player. He was representing the West Indies against someone he came up with, and in the middle of a tour match, he auditioned for a county gig by embarrassing a top-quality player.

Garfield Sobers cut off his own finger, batted everywhere from one to nine, bowled three different kinds of deliveries, fielded everywhere he was needed, invented freelance cricket, partied all night, beat poverty, overcame systemic racism, made his money, tied a Test, and lived to 89.

Garfield Sobers could do everything. Garfield Sobers did do everything.

And how.

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Jack Leach is launching himself at the Lord’s pavilion. Most of the members are still settling into their seats, and yet their spinner is desperate to save a boundary on the first morning of the Test. A few months earlier, Leach would have just followed the ball, let it hit the rope, and gone back to his spot.

But this is one of the most important sessions in Test history. We don’t know it yet, but this is almost another sport being born.

The fans and media don’t know that either, which is why it looks so bizarre when Leach throws himself headfirst at the ball, in a violent, slightly unathletic way.

It’s nothing like the way Brendon McCullum used to do it. No player was better at launching himself headfirst at cricket balls than the Kiwi great. No fear, ever, every moment worth risking his body for. And he’d already told England the team under him would play the same way for this Test, the first of his reign. That’s why we have the Lord’s Leach launch.

But while Englishman is a very decent left-arm spinner, athletically he and McCullum are different kinds of mammals. In the act of his slidey, awkward dive, he cracks his head and concusses himself.

This is the first morning of Bazball. England’s opening act is knocking out their own spinner. McCullum wanted them to play like him. Leach tried as hard as he could. And failed.

Cults are intoxicating, and that’s how the followers get so drunk.

***

There are two Bazballs.

The first is the England team’s mantra and religious doctrine, though they hate the name. Let’s be honest, it was basically a cult. That Bazball grates on people. It’s arrogant, and often nonsensical: an England player saying they wished the opposition had scored more, because they fancied chasing 500. Claiming they play a more enjoyable game, and are therefore winning on some other plane entirely.

The second Bazball is a noun. As the Collins Dictionary defines it: “a style of Test cricket in which the batting side attempts to gain the initiative by playing in a highly aggressive manner.”

By the end, it was hard to take the cult version seriously. England got drunk on it, lost matches, and said a lot of stupid things. That nonsense got mixed in with the noun, which was a genuinely incredible style of cricket, and probably overdue.

This week an English cricket fan called Oscar Trimboli sent me an email. He’d put McCullum’s coaching career through the AI models and come back with a 27-page report. One thing is worth noting, McCullum took over when England were ranked fifth. He leaves with them ranked fifth.

That’s the frame for everything that follows: the hype, the myth, the bluster. A flawed team had a great run, and finished back roughly where it started, because the holes were always there.

They started well. Their first series was against a WTC-holding New Zealand side who didn’t know what hit them, helped by post-COVID Dukes balls going soft in English conditions, letting them whack bowlers everywhere. Whatever the cause, the impression stuck with everyone watching.

Next was the one-off Test against India that never should have existed. Another chase. Four Tests in, the hype was enormous, before an ordinary South African side rolled them in the fifth. It was a series England could have lost outright, if Dean Elgar hadn’t chosen to bat first at Old Trafford and been bowled out. Instead, England won that game, and the next, and the bumps got missed by most people watching.

What came next was extraordinary: a Pakistan side that had only ever believed in draws, forced into results on the flattest wickets in world cricket. It doesn’t sound like much unless you’d actually watched Test cricket in Pakistan before. It got more attention for the 500-run opening day than for what it actually broke.

Pakistan were poor. But what England did there was something we didn’t know was possible, a few months after doing something else new.

Before most sides had faced England once, New Zealand got a second go, and for a Test and a half were smacked completely. Then a strange call: England enforced the follow-on, partly, by their own admission, to free up days for drinking/golf. New Zealand were bowled out for 209 first time round, but nothing in the pitch said send them back in. Kane Williamson made maybe his greatest hundred, the Kiwis got in front, and set England 258, which they fell one run short of.

So: wins at home and away they shouldn’t have had, and a loss from an almost impossible position. But that was invisible because of New Zealand’s weird timezones.

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After beating Ireland, it was time for the Ashes, and Bazball may have found both its peak and its flaw in one day. Zak Crawley smashing a four off the first ball of the series was the peak. Declaring on day one at Edgbaston with Joe Root still in was the flaw.

And yet England should have won that Test if not for an epic eighth-wicket stand. The next one turned less on Bairstow’s batting than on his feet, and they still ran Australia close. They won at Leeds. So two close losses and a win, then they started thumping Australia at Old Trafford before rain ended it all.

There’s a version of this summer where England win the series and Bazball goes from a cult to the new national religion. Instead, rain in Manchester turned it into a draw. Ironic, for a team that didn’t believe a match could survive five days without a result.

This is also where “Moral Winners” started doing the rounds. That is the cult in full voice.

But if you go back to the noun, this idea began as a way to fix a flawed batting line-up that was so much better against the white ball. However, by 2023, though, their limited-overs form had fallen off a cliff, and Bazball had become the personality by default: a cult running through every part of the operation.

They were “saving Test cricket” (from whom, exactly, was never clear), and doing it while leaving a string of good-looking corpse innings behind them. Crawley could fail and still get the champagne and cigars. Failure didn’t seem to matter any more. Stories about players being unconscious in bars became routine. The team seemed to exist to win, or lose, as fast as possible, to leave more time for drinking and golf. A side that used to run on analysts and professionalism was now high on vibes and entertainment.

India, like Australia before them, never bought it. These were the same flawed players, with no surprises left in the method - England were by now telling opponents their plans in advance. So when Ollie Pope, the least obvious Bazballer on the roster, engineered a win over India using two work experience spinners, it shook them. India had planned for Bazball twice, and were 0-2. But four matches later, all of India’s plans worked fine, and England hit their first real losing streak.

The belief was starting to disappear.

But then England won a load against West Indies and Sri Lanka the following summer, which they might have even without Bazball. That is the trap, because a team of their ranking should always win these series.

Trimboli’s numbers show England have mostly sat around 3.5 in the rankings since 2000. This wasn’t Bazball working, it was just a better team winning.

But despite the bumps, Bazball was still seen as a big deal. But some of that was that McCullum arrived as a hero before he began. The 2015–19 white-ball era was built on what he’d already done with New Zealand; he won two World Cups before he’d coached an England net session.

By 2024, Bazball had separated English cricket into three camps: the true believers, the cautiously pessimistic, and the suppressive persons.

The believers drank the Kool-Aid as fast as the top order chased totals: every win, real or moral, counted. Simon Jordan had me on his show during the away Ashes still believing, even as England were visibly falling apart. The cautiously pessimistic wanted the dream but with caveats. Essentially Bazball with brains, but couldn’t quite look past the cracks. And the non-believers, some from day one, others peeling off after the New Zealand follow-on or the Edgbaston declaration or somewhere deep in the India series.

What nobody could argue with, even when the team was genuinely bad, was that every single moment was watchable: the most doomscrollable team in the sport.

The second Pakistan tour might be the most important series they played. They could have won the home Ashes. Barely anyone watched the New Zealand draw. Everyone loses to India over there.

But England did something psychological to Pakistan on that first tour. So when they want back and made 800 runs in an innings in the first Test of 2024, it broke something in the home side. Pakistan responded by going as extreme as England, but with the pitch: patio heaters, giant fans, whatever it took to make it turn.

It worked. The raging pitches shut Bazball down completely, and it looked, for a moment, like the doubters calling this a flat-pitch style of cricket had a point. But by then teams had also stopped being afraid of England, which mattered just as much.

Starting with the Oval loss to Sri Lanka in 2024, England have won eight of 21. The Pakistan series was the tipping point. They got in front of India at home yet never closed it out. Then they went to Australia believing piss and vinegar would be enough, and came home with one of the most embarrassing losses in Ashes history. Not an easy list to make.

By this stage, the cult was already running out of believers. McCullum’s comments were laughed at, Rob Key’s attempts at justification were pathetic, and Ben Stokes seemed to want to defend with the bat.

The era ended, fittingly, against the team that started it: New Zealand, in a series McCullum’s England went 1-0 up and still lost. Stokes retired, McCullum lasted only a few weeks more. And after all the hype and weirdness, the era was done.

The cult was over.

But the noun lives on.

Since McCullum, runs per over in Test cricket have gone up across the board, and it’s not just the men’s game. The women’s format has sped up too. The entire sport got an adrenaline boost. On the strategic idea alone, freedom, risk, a new way of reading red-ball cricket, I’d argue Test cricket is better for Bazball.

I can’t make the same case for the England cricket team. Their future might be better for having opened themselves up to new ideas. But right now, in the present tense, they still don’t have a settled top three, a spinner, and a bowling attack that fully makes sense. They beat the teams they’d probably have beaten anyway, and lost to the ones better than them. Simple, and somehow also not simple at all.

England put their entire cricket culture in a blender, changed everything that could be changed, handed their cult leader the keys, and ended up, more or less, back where they started.

To understand how, you have to understand him.

***

McCullum leads from the front. He plays hard, on and off the field: part super-human, the kind of man who makes other men want to be him, and makes them believe, for a while, that they can be.

That’s his strength as a coach, and his weakness. He wants a team of micro-McCullums. Almost nobody can actually be him.

But that isn’t the whole story. He’s a genuine tactical genuis, sees the game in ways very few coaches do, even if he can’t always explain how he got there. He was clearly sharper working alongside someone like Mike Hesson, who kept the basics covered while McCullum chased the ideas.

At England, he was paired with another Baz-shaped figure in Ben Stokes. When two men like that are in charge, everyone else follows. He told England he had a plan, and they didn’t just hand him the keys to the house, they signed the deeds over. When McCullum said jump, England launched themselves.

Those jumps were exciting. Genuinely, it was nothing like English cricket had produced ever before. So they went, headfirst, at the boundary, exactly like their hero always had.

When they were flying, it felt like everything English cricket had ever wanted to be.

When they hit the ground, it hurt.

Bazball is dead. Long live Bazball.

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Smriti Mandhana punished England’s new ball attack. It wasn’t reckless, or loose. It was a star player realising that the opposition was not at their best, and this was her chance to shine. She plays the ball on line, and England bowl wide or too straight, allowing her to pepper each square boundary with ease. India lose wickets, but not hers, as they race to 122 in the first session.

But in the second, Mandhana changes gears. Her captain, Harmanpreet Kaur, comes in to defend, and the star goes from a run a ball to a more normal Test rate. In the first session she slashed, in the second, it was a grind. That is proper batting - gearing up and down. She is a star, but also a professional. She performed each duty as it was needed.

As the partnership is about to take the game away from England, Harmanpreet has an arm issue. A long break occurs, and when it is over, Issy Wong bowls a benign length ball wide of the stumps, and Mandhana nicks behind.

At the time, it feels like a missed opportunity; Mandhana could have got her name on the board, and she also could have won the match. But when she is out, the score is 190/4.

England will not pass that amount in either innings.

***

India went in with only two seamers for this match, England had three. On a green surface on day one the ball nipped around, and it would continue to do that on the second. The difference was that England’s seamers could not deliver three good balls in a row, so there was no pressure.

The Indian seamers are slower. Kranti Gaud is about Issy Wong’s pace, but Sayali Satghare is considerably slower. Pace is important, but on a wicket like this, accuracy matters more. Both Gaud and Satghare swing the ball, and importantly in different directions. Gaud’s natural swing is in, and Satghare’s moves away.

That was a conscious choice. England’s bowling attack was built on bigger names and faster pace, but at times Bell and Filer seemed to be fulfilling the same role.

But Gaud on this surface might have been even better when bowling the wobbleball, and Satghare downed Alice Capsey with a huge hooping inswinger. England’s attack is quick, India’s is skilful. They dissected the England techniques, finding every gap between bat and pad, exploiting angled blades, and at times humbling the local players. It was like their seamers, analysts and bowling coaches combined to make a symbiotic partnership. Gaud got on the honours board, Satghare ended up with four tidy wickets in the match.

England had all the seamers, India had the better ones.

Along with Mandhana, Harmanpreet and Deepti Sharma also made fifties. Even on a tricky surface, India should have scored more from the situation they got themselves in. But by scoring that big first innings, they set up the match.

England’s last chance was early wickets in the third innings.

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Shafali Verma opened up with Mandhana. She was out in the 21st over, the score was 88/1, and the contest was over. Sadly Mandhana couldn’t get her name up on the board, despite two half-centuries. But another batter did.

India had a plethora of wicketkeeping options available to them in this match. They could have picked Richa Ghosh. Instead, they chose Yastika Bhatia. According to Mel Farrell, one of the reasons was fitness - they believed that over the four days, picking the fitter player would be better. It was quite a choice, being that Bhatia bats at number three, so would have a much bigger workload.

They backed their selection process and believed in their fitness standards. Both were right.

The game might have been over when she came in, but Bhatia signed the death warrant in style. Cover driving along the ground and in the air. England had plans that she constantly escaped from. The only time she looked nervous was when she made the decision before lunch that she wanted her hundred, without seemingly clueing in Deepti that she would need more strike.

Luckily at the break she was 91*, and had the chance to chill out before coming back out to put her name on the board.

Her wicketkeeping was not always great, missing some chances, but she was clean and competent behind the stumps. India bet on her fitness, and she spent most of the game in the action proving them right.

And Richa Ghosh didn’t pout. In the second innings, she knocked up an unbeaten declaration fifty from her comfy space as a specialist number seven. She was asked to do less, put her ego to the side, and nailed it for the team.

Everything India did worked.

They came in with three spinners, with the thought being they needed a left-armer against England’s never-ending line-up of righties. But having the two offies of Deepti and Sneh Rana was what really worked, as spinning the ball back in caused all sorts of issues on a wicket with occasional turn and low bounce.

This was perfectly illustrated when Sneh Rana rags one back onto Sophie Ecclestone’s stumps to close the match. It is the kind of ball they have been delivering a lot. The English bowler has her fifty (to go with a five-wicket haul in the third innings), but again, the turn and low bounce is too much. Ecclestone is the final wicket, India have won.

When India won their Test at Wormsley in 2014, joy was the overwhelming emotion. The celebration photos went viral because they were so passionate.

But at Lord’s, it isn’t like that. The team celebrates and they enjoy their win, but it feels different. In 2014, this was still an amateur team. Wormsley is not the home of cricket - it is a private ground owned by US billionaires.

That was a different time and team. Now they play in cricket’s billion-dollar stadium; they are WPL stars and World Cup winners. This could have been an emotional Test, and it was like a celebration of the women’s game at many moments. But when it came to cricket, India were cold-blooded and professional.

The occasion was historic. Their cricket was ruthless.

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In one innings, Kranti Gaud has gone from India’s equal 40th leading wicket taker to their 19th.

That is not why she is smiling.

The sunglasses almost hide much of her face, but it’s clear that this is a joyous moment. The crowd is clapping, she holds the ball high, and faces every part of the ground. Then stops before the boundary line because there is one last part of the crowd she has missed.

For generations bowlers have walked off ahead of their team, with the ovation from the stands at Lord’s. It is part of the legacy. But this is different, this is not another decent spell, this is the ground’s first of this kind.

The Lord’s honour board is a thing of myth and legend amongst players. Every professional cricketer wants to get on their name there, it means more here than anyone else.

In cricket, we use the term etched into history all the time. It’s a constant phrase. But Lord’s started in 1814, in terms of sport, and even society, it is a different kind of historic place. And since the beginning the greatest players have visited here, desperate to get on the board. Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne, Brian Lara, Wasim Akram and Sunil Gavaskar are not written on the boards.

And until today, neither was any woman. But now Kranti Gaud will be etched into history as the first with a Test five wicket haul at Lord’s.

***

Mohammad Nissar was a tearaway quick bowler for India when they entered Test cricket. Even for generations after, there were no Indian seamers like him. He was really quick and quite aggressive. In six Tests, he took 26 wickets.

More importantly, he was the first Indian bowler on the Lord’s honours board.

The other seamers from India on that list include Kapil Dev and Jasprit Bumrah. If you take a look at the spinners, there is Chandrasekhar, Bishan Bedi and Vinoo Mankad. This is a very good list to be on.

And she did it in a way that would make any of the greats proud. After England had wasted the new ball, she came out in the dusk of day one, and probed. In Tammy Beaumont’s last Test, she crumpled her with one that jagged back.

For Maia Bouchier, she delivered a wobbleball that nipped in again and scrambled the England batter’s mind. For Nat Sciver-Brunt, it was a straight delivery that caught her in front. But the best ball was to Alice Capsey.

She had already got the batter to inside edge to short leg, but the catch was dropped. To follow that up she swung the ball in, and when it landed, it decked away.

What was left was a Renaissance painting.

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Capsey playing a near perfect forward defense in technical terms. Gaud screaming at the sky in celebration. And off stump sitting safely on the ground behind her. It was a renaissance painting for cricket.

If that was romantic, the fifth wicket was farce.

India moved Sneh Rana to second slip, and off the first delivery there, Lauren Bell could not have slashed the ball any harder. A thick edge hit Rana in the chest and ricocheted over her head.

None of this is usually a good sign for a bowler, but this time, Shafali Verma was lucky enough to see it, react and then leap behind her teammate to clutch a shocking one-hander.

This 22-year-old, a few weeks back, was overlooked in the T20 World Cup at times. And when she did play against Australia, they gave her an over. In the WPL, she almost never gets wickets and has a high economy.

And yet here she was, not only bowling well, but schooling the three England seamers. Gaud bowls slightly slower than the English quicks, though at a similar pace to Issy Wong. But with double the accuracy. The English seamers sprayed it around like they were being tickled upon release. Wong struggled when it swung; Bell and Filer never put it in the right place.

Gaud looked like a 15-year county pro. She kept off stump in play, swung the ball early, and seamed it later. She completely bamboozled players who grew up playing seam.

Eight years ago, Gaud had never played with a leather ball. She was a kid who played tennis-ball cricket with the boys, while those in her village disapproved. Her first game was an accident, when a team was short a player.

And now she is at Lord’s, teaching England how to bowl seam.

Considering their first Test was 1976, this Indian team really hasn’t played many matches. So it means you end up with these weird records like her jumping from 40th to 19th on the all-time leaderboard in one innings.

But this is India, and many of their wicket-takers have been spinners.

And so just by taking a couple of wickets at the WACA in her first Test, Gaud became one of 19 women credited with taking a wicket with seam for India.

Before this Test, she was equal 15th on the list; now she is sixth, and with a decent second-innings haul, fourth is still possible in this match.

Of course, to get first, she would have to go beyond Jhulan Goswami. The spiritual leader of India’s attack, and also the literal one. She was often a one-person army trudging in for India. But despite a 20-year career of pounding the crease, she managed 14 Tests, and obviously, none of them were at Lord’s.

So today, a bowler who was born after Goswami’s debut got a chance that her hero never did.

A young female Indian seamer, who was told when she was a kid not to play cricket, who picked up a leather ball by accident only eight years ago, is about to have her name written on the Lord’s honours board.

Written is the wrong term. Etched feels right.

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There is a uniform of Lord’s cricket fans. It’s so noticeable that when you are on the tube, you can spot them clearly. Beige chinos, maybe plum red if they’re a bit fun. Checked shirt, the odd gilet, straw hats (often white) and the bacon and egg uniform of the MCC itself. Throw in a food hamper, a copy of the Telegraph, and they look nothing like any other people on the Tube. Once you have identified them, you don’t need to look at the stations on the Jubilee line, you just wait for all the straw hats to rise, and you leave with them.

I’m not sure how many times this has happened in my career, but it must be around 100 trips to his ground. This is what travelling to Lord’s feels like for a Test.

But on the 10th of July, 2026, it didn’t. Looking around the tube, it was hard to work out who was going to jump out at St John’s Wood, and who was just off somewhere else.

There was almost no one in a traditional Lord’s uniform.

When the train stopped, the people who got up wore t-shirts and sandals. There was no Telegraph to be read, and the traditional hampers had been replaced by backpacks and handbags. Even before you got to the ground, it was clear this was not a normal Lord’s Test.

Those who disembarked also had a different pattern - it wasn’t just that the groups of men had been replaced by women. There were a lot of dads and daughters, and even grandfathers were with their granddaughters. It’s not that this is never seen in English cricket. But at Lord’s, for day one of a Test, it’s rare to see many kids - in part because of the incredibly high prices at the ground. Here there were kids everywhere.

A class gets off a bus, their hipster-looking teacher telling them to clap to prove they are paying attention. She has cool, rimmed sunglasses, short, spiky blond hair, and is wearing an Indian Test shirt. The kids wear, well, kids’ stuff. It shouldn’t feel shocking - many grounds around the world would have this. But not Lord’s. The only schoolkids they seem to like at this ground are those who went to Eton or Harrow. And this crew is not from there.

Lord’s has had one look for a very long time. Today is an out-of-uniform day.

***

The first session is played like two teams who haven’t been in a lot of Tests. England’s opening bowlers, the Laurens (Bell and Filer), are all over the shop with the red ball. Too full, too short, too wide, too straight. They both deliver filthy full tosses. At the same time, India is leaning into attacking them. They could just sit back and wait for the next ball down the leg side, but they are pressing forward to score instead.

At lunch, the score is 122/3. India are scoring very fast, but England are hanging in there because of the wickets.

No one can be surprised this was a little frantic - these teams don’t play Test cricket. Before the match, one net bowler (and media member), Enakshi Rajvanshi, said the Indian team were working on their leaves. They are playing Test cricket and learning how it works at the same time.

After the break, both teams find a different rhythm. England are line and length, drying up both ends with more ring fielders, while Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur are playing within themselves to soak up the pressure.

It took them both a session, but this is traditional Test cricket.

***

When I started my career, incels and hopeless husbands would frequently tell me that women didn’t like cricket, would never be any good at it, and it wouldn’t matter, because no one would watch. Men’s players would mock it, commentators would complain when they had to call games, and most writers just ignored it.

In 2012, I was at the World Cup for Cricinfo, and I told them I would be covering the men’s and women’s finals in the same way. A match would finish, and I would write a piece on it. The question was asked of why.

The answer was simple to me: cricket was cricket.

The Australian team didn’t take kindly to some of my more strident opinions. At that point, writing critically about women’s cricket just did not exist. But that was the problem.

Now there are specialists who only cover the women’s game. The money from TV rights and sponsorships is growing all the time. The WPL might be the biggest women’s league of any sport.

As long as women do anything, there will be people there telling them they can’t. But while everyone wanted to say this was historic, what it felt like was a celebration. It was hard to be at Lord’s today and not believe this was incredible for the game.

***

England are bowling wide of the stumps - even Sophie Ecclestone, who might be the person most likely to hit them in world cricket. It’s clear that this is a plan; they have been doing analysis on Jemimah Rodrigues and have realised she plays with her hands away from her body, especially when she cover drives.

England put out a deep point after a couple of stolen boundaries. But Rodrigues almost gets caught playing a loose drive. This encourages the home team more, and they also try the same method with the seamers. Before lunch, Rodrigues will drive with her hands away from her body, and she’ll drag on.

This is now a normal modern cricket thing. A player is worked out by video and data analysis, and the team executes the plan. But traditionally, women never saw their opponents until a game. They couldn’t follow them on TV, or even read up about them. They just magically appeared.

So things have changed.

But women’s cricket has only just got to a point where they have bowling boots designed for them. Until recently, they had to get them made themselves, or stuff men’s shoes at the side when they were too big for boys’ sizes. As far as I am aware, the first bat made for professional women’s cricket was in 2010.

This is a sport on one of the most rapid evolutionary curves we have ever seen. Rodrigues might have wished the analysis had slowed down for her part.

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***

While shooting my documentary, Death of a Gentleman, we were at Lord’s filming, and I was also looking after my toddler son. We were running around getting some shots, and he was waddling around, setting off the pitch alarm. It was in the middle of winter, and freezing. Some of his fun had meant that his under clothes had become unbuttoned.

The only place that was open around me was the Long Room. I carried him in there to refasten everything so he didn’t freeze.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a very upset MCC steward ran over to tell me off for changing a nappy in the Long Room. It was clear this was not a place made for families. It was for old men to wear their blazers.

Over the years, most people who have worked in cricket have been told off for something in the Long Room. Famous commentators have been denied entry, as have many celebrities.

More recently was the Lord’s members us showing their lack of knowledge of the laws of cricket (that their organisation still runs) while fighting with Australian cricketers for performing a legal stumping. The Long Room, even on a good day, is known as a stern tut-tutting kind of environment.

But not today. The England players are walking out to the ground, and they are being hugged by someone. The person doing the warm greetings is Anya Shrubsole, who won a World Cup final with a genius 6/46 spell here. And now she’s more like a proud aunty, smiling, laughing and importantly embracing the first women to walk out at Lord’s for a Test.

Sophie Ecclestone stops at times to wave at people she knows. This is Lord’s, it is still the Long Room, but it feels warmer. Less than three decades ago, there would have been no women in this room on most days.

In 1999, which is the year Ecclestone was born, and well into the childhood of some of England’s older players, women could not be members at Lord’s. Even the legendary Rachael Heyhoe Flint, who started cricket World Cups and was very much part of the establishment, was not invited.

In 1976, the first time the English Women’s team played here, there wasn’t even a thought they could be members of the MCC.

And today, those same women were not only here, but they rang the bell together.

Heyhoe Flint had to invent the World Cup, win it, and then wait just the 26 years to be one of the first women members here. She even had a gate here named after her, before a Test was played. Today, everything she and her fellow pioneers did, finally crossed the last hurdle.

Lord’s was, perhaps for the first time ever, an actual home of cricket.

***

Mady Villiers showed a perfect offspin delivery to bowl Harmanpreet Kaur through the gate. But she also bowled some loose ones, as all-rounders do.

Smriti Mandhana plays the ball on line rather than length. England bowled too wide or straight to her, and she destroyed them on both sides of the wicket.

Izzy Wong had trouble with the ball swinging; her first spell was a little sporadic because of it. Later she came on to hit the seam and she completely shut India down, before breaking the big partnership.

Deepti Sharma has made more runs sweeping in women’s Tests than any player on record. She knelt down on the slope as often as she could against the spinners.

India were probably under par. But of course, we could never know this because we have no records to speak of. But with three players getting fifties, and a big partnership in the middle, they should have been looking for 335+. But in being dismissed so early, it allowed England to bat at dusk, and take Tammy Beaumont’s wicket.

Both teams will be happy, and frustrated, in equal measure. In a way that only multi-day cricket can allow for.

***

Lord’s was opened in 1814, the first men’s Test was played in 1884. In 1976, the women played their first ODI. Middlesex Women first played on the slope in 2018 (or 2019 if you want it for a real match).

The Eton vs Harrow game has been played nearly 200 times at Lord’s.

And in 2026, just a mere 142 years after the first men’s Test here, and 92 years after the first women’s match anywhere, the women are allowed to wear whites on the slope.

Cricket is a conservative game, the MCC members are still fighting to keep their precious posh school game here. Yet, they never noticed the women didn’t play here.

***

There are three balls on the pitch. Deepti Sharma is practicing on the roped off corner of the field in front of the Allen Stand. It’s not something you see a lot in men’s cricket, but with the extra room, it clearly makes more sense to take her throwdowns here, and not go all the way out to the Nursery Ground as she is batting next.

All of this is done in front of the Gubby Allen Stand. Named after a man who was not really that popular in his time, and less so now. He also, allegedly, decided to hold the presentation in the Long Room at the end of play in the 1976 match, which meant none of the players’ friends or families could enter. How would he have reacted to women being members, and a Test at Lord’s, asked precisely no one at Lord’s today.

While warming up, Deepti misses one ball, and while she has a fielder out there working with her, he doesn’t see this one as he’s picking up another that she hit earlier. The ball slowly trickles behind her, and very gently hits the padded triangle, but with just enough force to roll up and down the slope, and then onto the playing surface.

There are no fans on that side of the ground, outside of the corporate boxes, and the security guards don’t see it either. So it’s clear that after this break for Harmanpreet Kaur’s injured arm, there will be two balls on the field at once.

Then Deepti misses another one - this one thrown quicker - and while the professional fielder hasn’t seen it either, a security guard does. He slowly makes his way over to the boundary as Izzy Wong is coming in to bowl.

But she delivers before he can pick up the two superfluous balls on the surface.

This was the only weird thing that happened today. The only moment where something happened that probably wouldn’t occur in a men’s Test. It was just cricket, with different chromosomes. There was no gynocracy takeover, sadly. Lightning did not strike MCC members for allowing this. And no Satanic wormholes opened up above the Pavilion.

Instead, what happened was more than a hundred years late: women playing a Test at Lord’s.

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After nine balls in the World Cup final, Australia had nine runs in their chase. Remember, they’re going after 151, so they’re not massively behind. But for a team like them, it’s not exactly the kind of situation you would expect. Then Lauren Bell saw Georgie Voll about to ramp, and she completely panicked.

She bowled the ball wide, and then it swung away. And so in the second over of Australia’s chase, Lauren Bell missed the cut strip, and the keeper and slip couldn’t stop it. Australia added five runs to the score.

And the next ball was heaved away by Voll as well. So it meant that after nine balls, Australia had scored nine runs, and then they scored nine runs from the following delivery. But Lauren Bell fights back, and she castles Voll.

Phoebe Litchfield comes in, and on the first delivery she faces, she smashes a four. They don’t really care, this Australian team. They just keep coming for you.

After the game in the UK, Sky are showing a Lauren Bell masterclass. And she’s very talented and skillful, especially with the slower ones. She deserves to have her own masterclass for the fantastic player she is. But after three overs in this final, she was 1/38.

And when it comes to masters in the women’s cricket universe, there is another level. It’s a lot higher, and it’s green and gold.

***

There has been a feeling for a little while that maybe the Australian women’s team are slipping just a little bit. Perhaps it’s more hope than anything else, but they had lost the previous two World Cups, and India did well against them at home. You had the WPL and the Women’s Hundred coming through, South Africa playing lots of good cricket, and New Zealand just having won a tournament.

It suddenly feels like all these teams are having moments around them, and perhaps as a joint collective, they’ve just gotten a little bit closer to the Australian team.

Because of this, perhaps every loss is overanalyzed or overindexed on. Looking for little breadcrumbs or clues that tell you maybe this side is not as good as it used to be. However, they still came into this World Cup as favourites.

When you look at this Australian team, they are nearly perfect in their construction. Their batting order never seems to finish, and it feels like every single player can bowl. It means that at any time you look at them, they have two options.

With the new ball, they can rip through you, or they can suffocate you with dots. So whatever is needed in a game, they will go with that. In their spin, they have every kind except for left arm wrist, and they can chop and change on mood, matchups, pitch, game situation, whenever they need to, and everyone is good.

Annabel Sutherland gets them extra bounce and causes genuine cross-seam issues, especially when most teams don’t even have that as an option. And when they get to the death, they can basically choose whoever they think will work on that day.

Everyone’s always going to have overs left in this team. It’s like going to the world’s best buffet and not being sure what you want. Sometimes you look at their bowling figures at the end of the day and you’re like, ‘Why didn’t they use her?’ And then you go, ‘Oh, it’s because they’ve got her and her and her and her. I understand that now.’

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When you look at their bowling, they have basically one of everything. In a way, it’s almost cheating. But they also bowl scarily straight.

One huge difference between the men’s and the women’s game is how straight you have to bowl the ball. You can keep the stumps in play so much more because the bowling actions are all lower. So you’re always really looking to keep the ball as close to possible as hitting the wickets.

And a lot of teams try this and struggle and have their own problems. As we all know, the stumps actually aren’t that big when you go out and measure them. So a normal bowler’s going to miss them a lot. When Australia bowl, it’s like they have magnets in them.

They’re always keeping the stumps in play. So when they make a mistake, it’s usually because they’ve gone a little bit too straight. There’s almost never any width there. They are at you the entire time. And with their batting, there’s something else going on here.

At the top of the order, they basically have automatic scorers and microwave scorers. So an automatic scorer is someone who’s always going to be chugging away and making runs. Like the fact that Beth Mooney averages, I don’t know, more than a hundred in T20 World Cup finals.

And they don’t just have her, they also have Ellyse Perry, who’s also won a lot of World Cups. Considering the men’s football World Cup is on at the moment, remember that Perry once kicked an incredible goal in the women’s edition too. And so one of Mooney or Perry is almost going to make runs every single time.

That means that Phoebe Litchfield and Georgia Voll could come in and just go nuts if they want to. Because they know that the others will make runs, and that their role is to cause a little bit of chaos.

If either of them go really well, they can win the game very early on. Voll went out in the final, and Litchfield just came in and scored so quickly that by the time she was dismissed, the match was over. The England players, and by that I largely mean Nat Sciver-Brunt, could barely hit the ball off the square, and Litchfield could barely keep it on it.

And then later on in the innings, they also have nuclear power. Ash Gardner can come in and clear the ropes from the first ball. And they’ve got so many other talented batters, although I can’t tell you who they all are because they never actually seem to have to go out and do the job.

So often it’s just the top-order dominating. But one of the reasons those at the top can go so hard is because their depth is insane. Kim Garth bats at number 10. She has top scores across formats of 49, 72 and 51. She is a top seven bat in most teams in this World Cup. When she played for Ireland, she even batted a fair bit at number three. She has mostly batted in the top seven in her entire T20 career.

And if you look at this World Cup, maybe the lowest that any team would have her would be a number eight, and she’d still be a great number eight. She bats at number 10 for Australia. Behind her is Lucy Hamilton at number 11, who has batted at number five a couple times in the WBBL and made 36*(19) coming in at nine on her WPL debut. This is not a normal cricket team.

I changed my mind from before. This is actually cheating.

A great innings, a great spell, a bad toss, dew, catches, whatever it may be, a fluke run out. The great T20 teams win about 66 to 70% of the time. And if you look at the Australian team over the totality of the T20 World Cup, they have played 56 matches and they have lost nine, and yet they have won seven titles.

In terms of cricket, there are masters and then there is the Australian team. They are masters of the universe.

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Australia and England meet again in a T20 World Cup final after eight years. The last one was at North Sound in Antigua, as the Aussies lifted their fourth title in the shortest format. They also faced each other in the 2022 ODI World Cup final, which Australia won.

Both teams have six players each from that final in their current squads.

But remember, they are playing this final at Lord’s, where England won the inaugural T20 World Cup final against New Zealand in 2009. They also won the 50 over editions at the same venue in 1993 and 2017.

Either way, there is going to be a first for the hosts. Finally defeating Australia in a World Cup final, or finally losing one at Lord’s.

***

Australia

With South Africa and India on the same side of the draw, Australia were in the ‘Group of Death’. And they’d play the former to kick off their campaign, while the latter was the final match of the league stage.

And things did not exactly begin their way at Manchester. South Africa arguably had the best new ball pace duo in the competition, and they got rid of the openers early. Phoebe Litchfield decided to respond with a counterattacking half-century; the fifth-fastest in the tournament’s history. But again, they lost two wickets in quick succession after the powerplay. Ellyse Perry and Georgia Wareham then had a crucial partnership, while Annabel Sutherland also chipped in with a few handy runs. Their ultra deep batting allowed them to get to 172.

Sophie Molineux and Kim Garth also took two wickets in the first 11 balls. They did a great job keeping Laura Wolvaardt - the new, evolved T20 version - quiet for most of her innings. A sharp throw from Wareham in the deep cut short Kapp’s innings. And the South African lineup just fell apart once Wolvaardt was gone. Their spin quartet combined for eight wickets.

They didn’t have Litchfield and Ash Gardner against Bangladesh at Leeds. Not that it would matter; Australia won the toss and elected to destroy them anyway. Garth got the ball to move and her two early wickets came from attacking the stumps. Perry took two wickets in the eighth, which had them 27 for 5. If you want to be really nitpicky about it, you can say they should have been able to get Bangladesh all out. Instead, they finished 77 for 8. Voll scored 45; they won with more than half the overs to spare.

Beth Mooney turned up against the Dutch in Southampton. She smashed six fours in 19 balls in the powerplay. And once the field was spread out, she scored even faster - from twos, not boundaries. However, a stiff back meant she had to go off, and that meant Georgia Voll was their emergency wicketkeeper. Voll did take a catch and managed not to concede a bye either, so that worked out fine. Gardner and Wareham scored really fast, too. Garth took two powerplay wickets, but the innings was a slow burn as the Dutch made 121 despite losing their third and final wicket in the 20th.

Before they faced Pakistan at Leeds, India also lost to South Africa, which meant it could end up being a two-way battle between those sides for the second spot with Australia’s NRR. After losing Mooney on the first ball, Perry and Voll added 100 in under ten overs. Perry was the aggressor in that partnership, but after losing three wickets in seven balls, she geared back. Sutherland and then Carey played important knocks to set Pakistan 200. Australia tried eight different bowlers in this innings, and none of them were part-timers; a unique luxury. But Pakistan lost three wickets to runouts, and failed to achieve even half the runs.

The game against India at Lord’s was a must-win only for them, not the Aussies. India did not lose a single wicket in the first six overs, but they didn’t bat as fast as you’d expect them to. Of the four wickets, there was a runout, a retired out and a 20th over dismissal. So each of their top four made runs, but nobody did it as fast as the Harmonster. Lucy Hamilton - playing her first World Cup - and Wareham both went at under a run a ball.

Voll was out in the first over, so Mooney and Litchfield had to rebuild. It was an uncharacteristic knock from the young left-hander, striking at 96. And it wasn’t quite an easy road ahead when they were 68/3 in the 10th over. But the two experienced allrounders - Perry and Gardner - made it seem like a walk in the park. But if you look at their entire campaign, it was the game that challenged them the most.

In the semi-final, Australia did not take a powerplay wicket against the West Indies either. But they only conceded 35 in that period. However, they won this match in the middle overs, taking six wickets for only 49 runs. The spin trio got two dismissals each. Mooney killed the chase in the powerplay, and finished it off with Gardner. But Perry had to retire hurt after the 7th over due to “minor quad awareness”.

If you really have to nitpick Australia, it’s that Voll hasn’t yet shown up against the best teams, they perhaps haven’t taken the wickets you expect, and Sutherland hasn’t been elite with the ball. But they’re through to the final after three tournaments, so they really wouldn’t be complaining much.

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England

England played Sri Lanka in the first match of this tournament at Birmingham. They lost the toss and were put in to bat first. And that matters, because the hosts did not go all guns blazing in the powerplay and lost zero wickets. The opening pair would then smash another 84 runs in only 7.4 overs after that. Some poor fielding by Sri Lanka certainly aided them. Nat Sciver-Brunt took a little bit of time before clobbering five boundaries in the final two overs. But it was Danni Wyatt-Hodge’s day, as she made an excellent hundred to kickstart their campaign. Sri Lanka lost three wickets in the powerplay, and Charlie Dean took the biggest wicket of Chamari Athapaththu. Even before Freya Kemp took her four-wicket haul, England had practically won the game.

Ireland were 57 for 5 in the 10th over, but they managed to bat out the 20 overs and set England 119. They lost both their openers and Alice Capsey in the powerplay, so the onus was on the two most experienced batters - Sciver-Brunt and Heather Knight - to take them out of trouble. And so they did, adding 64 runs in about eight overs. They did stumble a little even after that, but won with four wickets and 15 balls to spare.

Coming in at three in place of the injured Sciver-Brunt, Sophia Dunkley made 43 of England’s 51 runs in the powerplay against Scotland. Apart from the openers, everybody else chipped in with contributions, but the standout partnership was Kemp and Dani Gibson adding 61 in the last three and a half overs to take them to 200 for the second time in this competition. And though Scotland put in a good effort, it was never going to be enough. Sophie Ecclestone was the pick of the bowlers at Leeds.

They then had to face the unbeaten West Indies at Lord’s. They were put in to bat first, and despite losing two powerplay wickets, they didn’t really slow down much. The innings was held together by Wyatt-Hodge first, and then Knight. Hayley Matthews had a controversial dismissal where there was a clear gap between bat and ball in a caught behind, and then Dottin also perished in the powerplay. Bell and Ecclestone both conceded less than six per over as they won by the same margin as against Scotland. That sealed a berth in the semi-final.

After the West Indies lost to Ireland, New Zealand had one last shot at making the top four, and that would be by defeating England. The hosts didn’t take a new ball wicket against the Kiwis, but they only allowed 44 runs in that duration. Kemp and Gibson took three wickets in four balls from 9.6 to 10.3. Bell took the big wicket of Sophie Devine, who was on 30 off 13 before the dismissal. Her, Ecclestone and Linsey Smith were the most frugal of the lot. They then conceded only 35 runs at the death, and Wyatt-Hodge’s unbeaten 89 ensured yet another comfortable victory.

England were in a major spot of bother after South Africa’s quicks had them reeling at 23 for 3 in the fourth over. Of course, it had to be Sciver-Brunt and Knight again. Their century partnership would ultimately define the semi-final. The current skipper scored quicker, while the former World Cup winning skipper held one end up. If anything, they could have even gotten to over 180 but both of them got out just before the final push. Defending 169, none of their bowlers went for eight an over. Linsey Smith got the biggest wicket of them all in Laura Wolvaardt, as Sophie Ecclestone took a good catch in the ring. Dean got rid of Kapp and Tazmin Brits, and it was all over.

Their batting has found a way, without ever looking invincible. Jones and Capsey are not in form. There isn’t much to worry about when it comes to their bowling as even their fifth option overs have been covered well by the all-rounders.

***

These are the two unbeaten teams, so that makes it cleaner. Since the last T20 World Cup, they’ve played each other in a three-match series, which the Aussies clean-swept. But that was played Down Under, and England have certainly improved as a cricket team since. Plus being at home helps.

So will Australia get back to collecting trophies after two semi-final losses, or will England finally win their second T20 World Cup at Lord’s?

Australia are massive favourites, as they have been this entire time. But one off T20 finals don’t care about stuff like that.

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There is something truly remarkable about watching someone who is a famous leader. They are larger than life, they suck up all the oxygen, everything is about them – and even though you know one day they will die, be voted out, or retire – when it actually happens, there’s a sense of shock.

We saw that happen when Saddam Hussein’s regime fell in Iraq in the 2000s. Of course, I’m not saying Ben Stokes is Saddam Hussein – but we’ve all seen something like this happen in our life before, and we’ve been like, “Oh my God, this has actually happened.”

So when Ben Stokes announced he was retiring on June 28, most of us already had an inkling. I’d already written something that could be used as a retirement piece. And there was no doubt there was more than enough scuttlebutt and innuendo and whatever you wanted out there, to say that something was wrong and Ben Stokes might go.

But there’s a difference between that, and actually bringing the giant man down.

Because now, the entire structure has gone down, piece by piece. Almost everything in English cricket, one way or another, is kind of built around the personality, the cricket, the captaincy, the leadership, the ethos of Ben Stokes. And suddenly, all of that has just come falling down.

And what English cricket is left with is a gaping hole.

It’s always about Ben Stokes. But in this case, I really think it’s more about the lack of Ben Stokes and what that does to the rest of English cricket.

You can take Ben Stokes out, but there is going to be a cavalcade of other things that happen. Obviously, they’ll need a new Test captain. They might also need a new Test vice-captain. They’re going to need a new allrounder. But there’s also other things. The coach might be gone. The general manager might be gone. There are a lot of different changes that happened when Ben Stokes, at 3:25 pm on June 28, announced a press conference while he was bowling a delivery.

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Not a single New Zealand player made the headlines for being in a nightclub late at night when a fight broke out. No Blackcaps were involved in an internal struggle for power that could bring down an era. And no Kiwis were overlooked for leadership honours because recently a bouncer punched him outside a club.

They played their cricket the same unsexy way.

They have no huge cricket-bending theories, they are not trying to win anything morally, and they understand there are times when you just need to hang in there. In this world, it is almost a novel idea.

They played cricket, while their opposition was playing 5D chess while injecting Fentanyl into their eyeballs on the field, and slapstick capers off it. The cricket team won.

South Africa last won on England pitches in 2012, India was 2007 and Australia not since 2001. New Zealand just did it without Trent Boult, Neil Wagner, Tim Southee, Ross Taylor and BJ Watling. Kyle Jamieson and Matt Henry didn’t finish the series, nor did Glenn Phillips. And Kane Williamson played a single Test.

On top of that, they came back from behind in a three match series.

It is hard to tell from all the nonsense of England’s stunning self immolation how good a win this was. But at the end of Lord’s, no one thought Tom Latham would hold the trophy up.

On the last day of the series, England’s best chance was Joe Root staying out there. Early on, Jamie Smith pushed a ball into the offside to point. Both he and Root seemed to think there was a single there. And, maybe they were right.

But Henry Nicholls, who was a backup batter to start this tour, flew around from gully, slid into the ball, and then as he was falling back flung it at the one stump he could see. Root was well short.

And if you think it was a fluke, a few overs later he hit the stumps again from the same kind of fielding. What New Zealand did was sane, smart cricket while England burned.

***

Daryl Mitchell’s body was covered in bruises. His style of batting, coming out of his crease, walking towards cover, and playing with his body behind the ball, is perfect on some surfaces. But on the Trent Bridge wicket, he was hit everywhere. Head, arm, hip and chest.

He was never in great form in this series, even while making his hundred. But when England got his top order out, he just found a way. He realised early on that if he got outside the line, England couldn’t bowl him, and LBWs were unlikely. And so he made the decision to be hit a lot.

It is that simple, so he picked up a few bruises, but also 100 runs. He batted for 400 minutes on a wicket that was attacking him physically, and he barely played a shot back. Less than an over after their declaration, England were playing reverse ramps.

Of all New Zealand’s specialist batters, Rachin Ravindra is probably the most English in his style. He stands legside of the ball, he likes to hit it a lot, and is a natural scorer. Twice in this series he made big half centuries, worth far more than the numbers suggest. In his Trent Bridge knock, he was well above a run a ball, before England bowled wide.

His counterattack had worked, he could have kept slashing at the wide ones. Instead, he left them. His aggressive style had forced England into a 7/2 field, hanging the ball miles outside off stump with seven men to retrieve it. So he waited.

By the time he was dismissed, England were out of the game. He never chased, or tried to walk outside off stump and slog to leg. What would England batters have done?

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Nathan Smith is just a good cricketer, while still almost feeling like a club player. He moves well in the field, can hold a bat, and with the ball he hustles in the low to mid 80s. A few years ago, he might have been an England type cricketer. But his skills as a bowler - the fact he can swing it both ways and bowl the wobbleball in a skiddy way - is not the kind of high impact England want.

He is simply too slow, and too unsexy for England’s new setup. This series, he almost always found a way of being handy - from holding up an end all the way to reverse swing. When he had the ball, he fit in where he had to. England went for him, scoring at nearly four runs an over despite his constant nagging areas. But at the end, he had 16 wickets, the same tally as Richard Hadlee in 1990.

Glenn Phillips would be picked by England - they would bat him at number three, use him as a keeper, or make him their main spinner. Maybe all at once. At Lord’s, he was playing a similar game plan: the pitch was tough, so he decided to upset their line and length by attacking. He made runs in both innings.

But it was at the Oval he had his biggest impact. Taking a mediocre total and pushing it until they were miles ahead. A lot of that was attacking, but some of it was simply ducking. Jofra Archer was on one in the weird late afternoon light, and Phillips spent as much time on the ground as he did batting. He could have hooked his way out of trouble, but he barely did. So even the Blackcaps’ most expansive man was willing to let the bowler have his moment. Lay down and take it for his country.

And heading into the last match, Phillips was their most in-form batter. He then had a side strain, and couldn’t play at all.

If that was all that happened, it would have been fine. But in this series the Kiwis lost Jacob Duffy due to paternity leave before the series started. Kyle Jamieson missed the last match because they’re terrified of breaking him again. And Blair Tickner bowled three overs before concussion ended his involvement. New Zealand had their full strength team once, in the first match, when they got smashed.

This was a win from their depth. Zak Foulkes wasn’t picked for a single match, and yet he stood up with bat and ball when needed.

Think of Matt Henry. In the first match, he got a back spasm after one spell. If you have a player like him, England is exactly where you want him deployed. On a wicket like Lord’s, he should be unplayable. Instead when he did bowl, you could hear his body creaking.

And yet he played in the next Test, slower and more careful than usual. At that point, it was his calf that was the issue. So he was within himself, without the zip off the pitch you expect. Regardless, he completely got in the heads of England’s two best batters, Root and Brook. He took a ten-wicket haul at 90% fitness. England couldn’t get wickets out of fully fit bowlers.

Part of that was Tom Blundell standing up at the stumps. When this period of cricket is discussed, Blundell deserves more than a footnote. Wicketkeepers haven’t stood up to seamers since the early 90s, unless the bowler is very slow. We pick batter-keepers now, not keeper-batters.

Blundell is a keeper and a batter. When he saw England using the crease with their Bazball shuffle, he went up to seamers like a throwback. Alex Carey gets a lot of credit, but Blundell did it first and every bit as well. It took until this Test for Jamie Smith to try it. It is hard and dangerous, and not at all what you want a non-specialist to attempt. But it kept England’s best players in handcuffs.

Then there is leadership. There are a lot of words being spilled about Ben Stokes being the heroic leader who could do no more. Leaving it all out on the field, and almost giving himself flowers as he did it. He went as hard as he could, until there was nothing left. As always with Stokes, there are elements of truth in that. But there is a whole lot of bullshit as well.

He went to the well one last time. But he also told us all about it, a lot. He was a victim of a terrible ECB culture - but one he helped build. Is he frustrated by the manoeuvring of English cricket around him? Yes. But he’s also lost a lot of Tests recently. He can try as hard as he wants. But a sensible team of professionals just made his clown car team look like idiots. That’s happened two series in a row.

Look at how former captain and legend Kane Williamson handled his retirement. He is arguably the second greatest player ever from his country. A giant of the game. But he slipped away quietly for the good of his team after one Test. Stokes is never quiet.

Tom Latham didn’t need to bowl long spells, or play weird shots. He put fielders in the right areas, his bowlers backed up his smart plans. When things went wrong, they made small adjustments, not wild swings. He was not in great form, but when he got in, he made a big difference to the total. He was not trying to alpha-male lead from the front. To borrow a term from his old boss, he steadied the ship while Stokes set the sails on fire.

When the pitch was flat on day one at Trent Bridge, Latham did little more than wait for England’s mistakes. He did that at the Oval too. His plan was not brave, nor crazy. It was simple and attainable. He lifted the trophy.

The finale was inspired by not one, but two run outs. But perhaps the most interesting came at the Oval. Will O’Rourke was in the middle of one of his very good spells, and Emilio Gay was not enjoying it. So he pushed the ball to mid off and bolted to get off strike. It was too close to Nathan Smith, who picked it up and ran an in-form Ben Duckett out.

Except, in the balls and overs before that, other things had been going on. Smith had fielded several balls at mid off, often athletically saving runs. For Duckett, he was fielding defensively, trying to stop boundaries. But for Gay, he had been creeping in.

He knew the young player was struggling, and he wanted to back up his bowler. By the time Gay hit the ball, Smith had already assumed he might steal a run, so he was on his toes and closer than at any other point. Gay was being attacked by O’Rourke, so he never noticed New Zealand were hunting him in the field as well.

In this series, the Blackcaps got three run outs. England got none.

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The crowd is clapping Ben Stokes, and he hasn’t taken a wicket in ages. His hands are on his hips, and he looks spent. He’s bowling one of those endless spells that he doesn’t need to. But he wants it. On Day 3, he didn’t bowl early enough as New Zealand got away. So he’s in full flagellating mode.

But the crowd is not cheering this spell. The news has passed around the stadium, whispers from social media and wireless radios - Ben Stokes is retiring. It was announced by Sky while Gus Atkinson was in the middle of the previous over. The press got the news about seven minutes before. Setting off a panic, phone calls, hushed conversations and a flurry of typing.

Now Stokes stands at the top of his mark, and the crowd start to cheer his run up.

New Zealand are so far ahead that earlier in the day, Joe Root had to regularly orchestrate the crowd noise. Showing them when and how to clap, just to create some energy while Daryl Mitchell blocked and bunted. Mitchell actually backed away, to try and stop it, but Root wanted more.

Now, there is no need, Stokes is striding in, and like a band about to play a huge rock set, there is one chord hanging in the air, and the crowd rise and rise. By the time he comes in, they are almost expectant.

They have seen this before. Stokes, at any moment, is worth watching. But he must have guessed why they are making their noise. Earlier in the day, he had already told his teammates.

Jacob Bethell is in the change-room, with the biggest look of shock on his face. There have been rumours, innuendo and scuttlebutt about the great man leaving. But with someone like Stokes, there is knowing it could happen, and then seeing it actually occur. Bethell was seven-years-old when Stokes made his debut, he only knows the English team with the allrounder in it. He had only just turned ten when Stokes made his first Test hundred at Perth. When 2019 came around, he was 15. His hero, idol and captain is quitting, and you can see the stunned expression on his face.

Jacob Bethell is us all.

When Stokes left the field, it felt like the crowd was quietly clapping. It was reverence. Like a state funeral procession was passing. It wasn’t very Ben Stokes.

For everything, he has been very rock ‘n roll. A live guitar solo where you can hear the crowd cheering in the background. It has been dirty, bluesy, grunge and punk. His Marshall amps have been at 11 the entire time.

There is a lot of Stokes legacy. But most of it has been loud. Ear bleeding.

When he was dismissed in this Test the first time, it was from a shooter out of the footmarks. As he walked off, I yelled in the press box, ‘Look at the pitch.’ And then he turned and looked at the pitch. He was a warrior and performer rolled into one.

So when the crowd is cheering him just for doing the thing he has done more than 100 times already today, you can’t help but feel something might happen. Zak Foulkes is a No.9, but he can hold a bat. He opened in his first-class debut, and he’s been dead-batting England for an hour with his forward press and soft hands. He looks like a batter.

But the issue for young Foulkes is that earlier he was facing Stokes on his own. Many people have tamed that. But Stokes with all of England at his back is different. And so, his first ball after retirement, the talisman waddles in with his broken knees to deliver a dead ordinary ball outside off.

Foulkes plays a shot, perhaps his first of the day, a wild backfoot punch. And this normal safe delivery suddenly gathers the Stokes English fan energy and does enough to find the edge, and also carry to slip.

How does he always do this?

When New Zealand declare, Stokes runs from the field. Some of us have already joked he will open the batting. Now it’s clear something is going on. He puts his pads on in the balcony. As always, he is like a model who knows where his light is.

Very few times have you ever seen a player put on pads with such intent. His walk out has nine shadow shots, all of them are huge. He’s hit four boundaries and not faced a ball.

Ben Duckett gives him strike in the first over. And from the warm up, it’s pretty clear he’s going to attack. But how much? Is this T20 careful Stokes, or will he be the light-your-arse-on-fire and swing, like from the start of Bazball?

First ball he moves down the pitch and slog slaps a ball to mid-off. The sound off the bat is about as loud as you ever hear. It’s so loud, it tells you it’s not just him on fire, but the entire battalion too.

Soon, he is trying to reverse scoop Nathan Smith. The entire Sky team rush into the box to ask what is happening. New Zealand freak out almost straight away, putting out deep third, and Stokes steals a single from their movements.

Maybe he is playing a reverse Malachi, trying to get the Blackcaps to freak out, and then steal ones.

Will O’Rourke’s first ball is on a length outside offstump, and Stokes hammers it back to him. It takes the Kiwi’s finger off, rebounds to mid-off, and is almost caught by a jumping Mitch Santner. Ben Stokes has invented pinball cricket in his last game.

O’Rourke has to go off, and because Ben Sears is injured too, New Zealand are suddenly down to three bowlers. Stokes wants to make it two, so he charges Zak Foulkes and puts him in the Members’.

For a moment, I remember what it was like when Stokes won at Headingley in 2019. The crowd and him came together to forge this incredible moment. This is not quite that. But Stokes is trying to will it into existence.

New Zealand are completely frazzled. Long-on and long-off are back, deep third goes out again, Tom Blundell asks for the helmet so he can come up to the stumps. Usually you declare a mile ahead and put the pressure on. But the Blackcaps are suddenly taken back to the last time they bowled at Trent Bridge.

Daryl Mitchell is trying to change the field while Stokes isn’t looking, but Kyle Jamieson (the sub) is talking to someone and misses it. That ball leaps off an invisible trampoline and gets an edge straight over Mitchell’s head.

When the ball is on the stumps, it feels like he wants to block or rotate. When it’s off line, he’s sending an entire factory worth of kitchen sinks at the damn ball.

Next over, Smith delivers a ball just outside off to Stokes. In the first innings, he would have defended it. Now he sweeps it into the stands, and then just laughs. The ridiculousness of his own life amuses him.

The crowd start cheering, “Four more years”.

It’s all insane.

One day, someone is going to look at his numbers, and wonder why we still all talk about Stokes. All we will be able to say is, ‘You had to be there.’ But here is the thing, I have been there for almost all of it, and I still don’t believe it.

He finds two more fours from a slash past slip and then a slap through covers. He’s already on 30, and no one seems to know what will happen next.

But when Foulkes delivers one full and wide, Stokes tries to hoik it through the legside. It is not a special ball, it doesn’t bounce weird or act odd. Stokes drags it across, but straight to Mitchell at midwicket.

This felt like a protest innings, perhaps even a dirty protest. And Mitchell, who had been spoiling things all day, hauled Stokes away.

In his pre-recorded speech to his teammates he said, “Reasons can wait, I’ve had many trips to the well for you boys and I’ve got one more trip to do."

He’s right. The reasons are for later. In fact, when Ben Stokes is having a big moment, reason can wait. This is Stokes world, reason can fuck off. It’s emotion time.

*This piece was updated after Ben Stokes’ final innings batting innings.

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When he was dismissed in this Test the first time, it was from a shooter out of the footmarks. As he walked off, I yelled in the press box, ‘Look at the pitch.’ And then he turned and looked at the fucken pitch. He was a warrior and performer rolled into one.

So when the crowd is cheering him just for doing the thing he has done more than 100 times already today, you can’t help but feel something might happen. Zak Foulkes is a No.9, but he can hold a bat. He opened in his first-class debut, and he’s been dead-batting England for an hour with his forward press and soft hands. He looks like a batter.

But the issue for young Foulkes, is before he was facing Stokes on his own. Many people have tamed that. But Stokes with all of England at his back is different. And so, his first ball after retirement, the talisman waddles in with his broken knees to deliver a dead ordinary ball outside off.

Foulkes plays a shot, perhaps his first of the day, a wild back foot punch. And this normal safe delivery suddenly gathers the Stokes English fan energy and does enough to find the edge, and also carry to slip.

How does he always do this?

When New Zealand declare, Stokes runs from the field. Some of us have already joked he will open the batting. Now it’s clear something is going on. He puts his pads on in the balcony. As always, he is like a model who knows where his light is.

Very few times have you ever seen a player put on pads with such intent. His walk out has nine shadow shots, all of them are huge. He’s hit four boundaries and not faced a ball.

Ben Duckett gives him strike in the first over. And from the warm up, it’s pretty clear he’s going to attack. But how much? Is this T20 careful Stokes, or will he be the light-your-arse-on-fire and swing, like from the start of Bazball?

First ball he moves down the pitch and slog slaps a ball to mid-off. The sound off the bat is about as loud as you ever hear. It’s so loud, it tells you it’s not just him on fire, but the entire battalion too.

Soon he is trying to reverse scoop Nathan Smith. The entire SKY team run into the box to ask what is happening. New Zealand freak out almost straight away, putting out deep third, and Stokes steals a single from their movements.

Maybe he is playing a reverse Malachi, trying to get the Blackcaps to freak out, and then steal ones.

Will O’Rourke’s first ball is on a length outside offstump, and Stokes hammers it back to him. It takes the Kiwi’s finger off, rebounds to mid-off, and is almost caught by a jumping Mitch Santner. Ben Stokes has invented pinball cricket in his last game.

O’Rourke has to go off, and because Ben Sears is injured too, New Zealand are suddenly down to three bowlers. Stokes wants to make it two, so he charges Zak Foulkes and puts him in the members stand.

For a moment, I remember what it was like when Stokes won at Headingley in 2019. The crowd and him came together to forge this incredible moment. This is not quite that. But Stokes is trying to will it into existence.

New Zealand are completely frazzled. Long-on and long-off are back, deep third goes out again, Tom Blundell asks for the helmet so he can come up to the stumps. Usually you decalre a mile ahead and put the pressure on, the Blackcaps are suddenly taken back to the last time they bowled at Trent Bridge.

Daryl Mitchell is trying to change the field while Stokes isn’t looking, but Kyle Jamesion (the sub) is talking to someone. That ball leaps off an invisible trampoline and gets an edge straight over Mitchell’s head.

When the ball is on the stumps it feels like he wants to block or rotate. When it’s offline he’s sending an entire factory worth of kitchen sinks at the damn ball.

Next over, Smith delivers a ball just outside off to Stokes. In the first innings, he would have defended it. Now he sweeps it into the stands, and then just laughs. The ridiculousness of his own life amuses him.

The crowd start cheering, “Four more years”.

It’s all insane.

One day,, someone is going to look at his numbers, and wonder why we still all talk about Stokes. All we will be able to say is, ‘You had to be there.’ But here is the thing, I have been there for almost all of it, and I still don’t fucken believe it.

He finds two more fours from a slash past slip and then a slap through covers. He’s already on 30, and no one seems to know what will happen next.

But when Foulkes delivers one full and wide, Stokes tries to hoik it through the legside. It is not a special ball, it doesn’t bounce weird or act odd. Stokes drags it across, but straight to Mitchell at midwicket.

This felt like a protest innings, perhaps even a dirty protest. And Mitchell, who had been spoiling things all day, hauled Stokes away.

In his pre-recorded speech to his team-mates he said, “Reasons can wait, I’ve had many trips to the well for you boys and I’ve got one more trip to do."

He’s right. The reasons are for later. In fact, when Ben Stokes is in a big moment, reason can wait. This is Stokes world, reason can fuck off. It’s emotion time.

*This piece was updated after Ben Stokes’ final innings batting innings.

I have a blind spot when it comes to cricket.

So today, when I was commentating for talkSPORT, a ball was hooked out to a fielder, and I saw the ball going and I saw the fielder come around, and I could see the angle. In my mind, I instantly think, “Oh, that is going to be fielded. There is no doubt that the player is going to stop that.”

I start to move my gaze away. And as I do, something goes wrong. Suddenly, the crowd is all cheering. I look back and Rachin Ravindra has missed the ball and it has gone for four. This actually happens a lot with me. I automatically assume that people are going to field balls that apparently they are not going to.

And for Rachin Ravindra, it has just been that kind of series. A bunch of punchlines with fleeting moments of success. And today, again, New Zealand needed him. People have expected him to do better, and he just hasn’t.

***

Rachin Ravindra lasted one ball in his first innings at Lord’s. I think what we know of that pitch now, no one’s going to hold that one completely against him. It was a very tough pitch. But in the second innings, he also never looked like it. Eventually, a ball kept low, and he was bowled for eight.

And for most international batters, especially those trying to make a big impact on England and Test cricket as a whole, that’s a pretty bad thing to have happened in a match. But it was not the worst thing that happened to him. Because twice in the Test, Rachin Ravindra dropped a very simple catch.

One was from Harry Brook, where it was hit out to him in the deep. It couldn’t have been hit any softer or easier or straight at him. And for some reason, he just kind of jumped at the ball chest first and dropped it. And I was arguing with a lot of people that was the worst one he missed in that Test, but the other one was also incredibly simple.

It was a flick to short midwicket that he just should’ve taken, and he didn’t. So he failed to make runs or to take catches. New Zealand were one-nil down, and their brightest prospect was turned off.

At the Oval, he got himself set, middled the ball, and took New Zealand away from danger. It looked like this was going to be his time. Then he hung his bat out to a fairly standard back of the length ball from Sonny Baker and gave the young man his first wicket in Test cricket.

And this was really the first time in the summer he looked in any kind of form. At Lord’s, it was tough for everyone. But now he had to go out in the field. New Zealand were on top, but it was still a position where it could have gone either way. And of course, at that point, James Rew hit one straight up in the air, and Rachin Ravindra just got a little bit lost.

This is when the series was at halfway. Three failures and three drops from Rachin Ravindra was all we had seen. There was a huge possibility of this series slipping out of his and New Zealand’s collective fingers.

When he came out to bat in the second innings, they were 28 for two.

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The Harmonster. Turn on a women’s game, and chances are Harmanpreet Kaur is playing. She has amassed more than 300 T20s alone, and 201 of them for India. That is more than anyone else.

Not just in the women’s game, but all of cricket. Rohit Sharma’s 159 seems anemic in comparison.

As captain, she won the coveted ODI World Cup on home soil last year, and she has two WPLs in her pocket. She was crowned Harmonster when she thumped an unbeaten 171 to change women’s cricket in 2017.

Her legacy is so huge that it demands books and movies. Lots of players are great, few shift the game. She knocked women’s cricket out of Derby and into the limelight.

Women’s cricket is in her shadow.

***

The T20 World Cup is a trophy that has evaded India’s women.

Their only final appearance was when Australia thrashed them in front of 86,000 people at the G. In 2023, they were inches away from the final; Harman’s bat got stuck in the pitch, and she was run out at a crucial juncture. Of course, it was versus Australia. India came close to beating them in a must-win clash in 2024 too, but fell short. This time, Harman was there till the end.

On Sunday, they face Australia again. An Australia, who don’t hold a World Cup in either format at the moment. And yet, strangely, they’re the best team in the world.

But since the heartbreaking loss for India at Sharjah in 2024, we have witnessed two versions of Harmanpreet Kaur, the T20 batter.

One that smashes sixes for Mumbai Indians, and the other that often gets out just before accelerating for India. With India’s backs against the wall after losing to South Africa, Harmanpreet’s team desperately needs the franchise Kaur to turn up.

Or, even just the old Indian one. Because her best years have arguably been wearing India’s blue. But not recently.

In the last two seasons of the WPL, Nat Sciver-Brunt is the only other batter with a higher true average and strike rate than Harman. Most of the players who score quicker are hovering around a neutral true average.

Bharti Fulmali is in the same cluster as her; she has less than two and a half times the runs, and bats at six or seven. What really sticks out is that the Indian captain is still among the best domestic players in the competition.

However, in T20Is, plenty of players have her covered on both metrics. Even the other two batters in her cluster score faster. On her team, only Deepti Sharma has a worse true strike rate, and she’s a proper all-rounder.

Since 2018, these are among two of the slowest years she’s ever had. Only 2020 was significantly worse. So this isn’t normal for her T20I career.

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Tom Latham pushes lustily at a ball too wide. It takes a predictable edge from a Jofra Archer delivery and flies to third slip.

There is no one there.

Usually in the first half hour of a Test, with Archer bowling to a lefty, there would be at least three slips, often more. And a delivery earlier, there was.

But then Ben Stokes moved third slip to second gully. Essentially making a decision based on little information, because he likes to move the field. He loves it. Sometimes you feel he almost just needs to make the move, any move, all the moves.

Today, the arbitrary movement cost England their only chance of a wicket for 300 runs.

***

This was not a day when what the bowlers did mattered much. A pitch so benign, it could cure cancer. Tom Latham won the toss and elected to make a hundred. It was the sort of wicket where you needed your fielders to step up.

When Rachin Ravindra was out caught, England rushed to Shoaib Bashir. He had not caught the ball, nor bowled it. But the delivery before he’d saved a run, and put Ravindra on strike. Ben Stokes ran to him like a lover in an airport.

It was a quiet day for England, but one where their captain tried to be loud.

Ben Stokes was clapping really hard. Yes, that is a weird note, but you could hear it through the stump mic. Clapping usually is only picked up when it’s by a slip fielder, but Stokes was at backward point, and mid on, and it was still loud. Suspiciously loud.

It was like he was making a point, that he was in fact still out there (hello ECB), or that his team needed to step up on the stinking hot day. It was clear he wanted to be heard, or felt. At times, he was clapping until someone else made a noise. When he went to pick his hat up from the umpire, he realised the team was quiet again, so he slapped his thigh as hard as he could. At all times, he wanted to let everyone know he was still here.

But on the field, he is almost always felt, because at all times he is moving the field.

I decided to watch every single field change for 50 overs. Was the innings that boring? Hard to say. But you need a day like this to really do a task like this. And I have been desperate to check this out for a while.

I had to come up with rules, a field change at the end of an over, or for a new bowler coming on obviously don’t count. There were lefties batting all day, but you set slightly different fields for each, so I didn’t count those either. I ignored any small changes, like someone moving a metre or two in the circle, or ten in the outfield. But if the field was set, and Stokes made a change, I counted every one I saw for 50 overs.

He made 54. More than one move an over. And I definitely missed a few.

This is slower than usual for England. Shoaib Bashir’s fields didn’t change much in his first three spells. And usually, England would have more bouncer periods, and in those Stokes can sometimes make several changes an over. But it was a flat pitch, and Stokes loves a tinker.

I think he has three distinct modes: follow the ball, genuine hunch, complete boredom.

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Ben Stokes’ shoulder is about to fall off.

Whether it’s true or not, that’s never the point. There is something wrong in his arm, yet he is going to bowl anyway. And he wants us to know.

These are the two crucial bits; that he is going to defy pain, again. And that he is going to let us know about it, again.

There is no doubt Stokes is a warrior. But also he’s a showman. When he’s dismissed, it is simply the best ball anyone has ever faced. Has any cricketer ever stared down at the surface with more suspicion after missing a straight delivery that bounced normally?

There is nothing he does softly. Even when he decides to dead-bat the ball, there is a sense of aggression. We are supposed to feel something every moment we watch him.

The shoulder is clearly hurt, but England need a wicket and so he bowls on, reattaching his arm for each delivery to ensure he can get one more Indian batter out. It’s masochistic, but also like a weird cabaret. The pain is clearly real, he’ll miss the following Test, but it’s also a performance.

Ben Stokes knows people are watching him, he understands his legacy is toughness, and he plays to it.

Does it matter that there is a sense of performance in what he does, if his shoulder is genuinely in tatters? Is this a man with a higher pain tolerance than other mortals, or just someone who watched too many action films in his youth? Was he inspired by his father’s decision to cut off part of his finger for rugby, or is this ruthless pragmatism part of Stokes’ DNA?

Ben Stokes is the lead character in the film Gladiator, Maximus Decimus Meridius. Someone who wants to just do the job and survive. But he is also the actor who plays him, Russell Crowe, understanding that the performance matters too.

And at the end, we are entertained.

There is no cricketer more likely to run through a wall for his country. However, there’s also no other player that’d choose to run through a wall when there was an open door available.

Ben Stokes wants the wall, he wants the pain.

***

19 from 6 needed.

Ben Stokes is a beast athletically, but his run up has always been lowkey; it feels like a club bowler coming in after a few weeks off. The look on his face after Carlos Brathwaite’s six is also familiar to amateur players. A look of dread and impending doom.

13 from 5 needed.

Ben Stokes screams, and then is standing mid-pitch, pursing his lips like he’s preparing for a stage play. No one is watching him; they are searching for which row at Eden Gardens Brathwaite has launched the ball.

7 from 4 needed.

Ben Stokes is squatting down on the pitch, his hand over his mouth, almost stifling the scream. Then he runs his hand through his hair and looks down. He is alone, desolate, broken. This is the image of a man who has lost a World Cup for his country.

1 from 3 needed.

Ben Stokes is staring into nothing, waiting to deliver the final ball. The last six is hit, it’s over.

Stokes should not have been a death bowler in that T20 World Cup, he almost never did it before that day. And when it went wrong, it did so in one of the most spectacular ways we’ve ever seen.

Earlier in the same year, Stokes made 258 from 198 balls against Morne Morkel and Kagiso Rabada in Cape Town.

In the space of three months, Stokes produced two moments that would define most cricketers. And they’re his footnotes.

***

Ben Stokes should not have been suspended for being out at a nightclub at 3:30AM.

Ben Stokes should have been suspended for being in charge of a culture where so many players have misbehaved, and breaking a rule he was part of implementing.

The issue is that the players needed a curfew, and that it was Stokes who first broke it. It is not a career-ending problem, but this team (and even the management) have acted like children for much of their reign. So when one of the people who was in charge of that broke the rule, he kind of left the ECB no choice.

What is fascinating is whether any of this would have come out at all if there had been no fight, of which at the moment it looks like he had nothing to do with. The fight was made public, but the ECB would have known Stokes had broken the curfew regardless, as their security guard was there.

And none of this is a secret. They know a lot about his after-hours prowess. So does the rest of the world.

***

In 1966, Garfield Sobers averaged almost 100 runs with the bat, when bowling, it was 24. He was the best fielder in the world, too. Averages don’t really tell the story here.

That year he was the leading run scorer in Tests by almost 300, though he only played 11 innings.

With the ball he took 32 wickets, good enough to be the second-highest wicket taker.

In the field, he was equal first in terms of catches by non-keepers (he was still second if you keep in glovemen).

It means that for one year, the West Indies had Don Bradman with the bat, Shaun Pollock bowling seam, Ashley Giles with finger spin, Simon Katich’s part-time wristies and Steve Smith in the slips. Oh, and he was captain. West Indies unsurprisingly won five of their seven Tests.

That may be the greatest single-year performance ever, but we’ve had others. Ian Botham took 66 wickets at 18 in 1978, with three Test hundreds. For Don Bradman, you have to choose between two years. 1948, 1000 runs in 8 Tests, from 13 innings. Or 1930, 8 knocks for 970 runs.

The most overlooked great, Hashim Amla, poured in more than 2300 in 26 matches for 2010 across formats: 10 hundreds, and a combined average of 76.

In 1976, Viv Richards made 1710 runs at 90 in just 11 Tests. And Ricky Ponting in 2003 won a World Cup final in an innings, but also averaged 100 in Tests, with three double tons.

Muthiah Muralidaran took 136 wickets at better than 20 in 2001. Which sounds great, but Waqar Younis added 96 at better than 15s to start the nineties.

Without getting too dudes saying dudes and just remembering old great cricketers, you could add years of Jasprit Bumrah, Imran Khan, Virat Kohli, Steve Smith and Sachin Tendulkar.

These are very specific types of great years, it’s about overall numbers, not vibes.

Compare that with Tillakaratne Dilshan’s 2009. 10 centuries across all three formats, but also gave the world the Dilscoop. That doesn’t include his incredible 96 from 56 balls in a World Cup semi-final that was more than 60% of his team’s runs.

But if you want impact, the next three are incredible. In 1994, Brian Lara broke two world records. First, the highest Test score, then going back to pick up the highest first-class score as well.

In 1983, Kapil Dev took 75 wickets at 23 in Tests. That was a huge year for him, but he also made 175 from 138 balls to save India’s World Cup campaign against a nagging Zimbabwe team. Then in the final, he ran back to catch Viv Richards. There is a film about that World Cup victory under Kapil’s captaincy.

But what about Wasim Akram, who found himself in the World Cup final against an experienced English team and the old ball? In two deliveries, he showed the entire planet what reverse swing was, and won the cornered tigers a World Cup. Then later on in the year he went to England and ended their entire decade’s hopes and dreams. There was a 66% increase in the amount of left-arm seam after 1992 (from 6.4% pre 1992 to 9.6% since 1993). That is not all Wasim, but he fathered more than most.

The names in this section are incredible: either the best peak players ever, or just the greatest to do it.

Ben Stokes is neither. He’s never made more than four hundreds in a year, or taken 50 wickets. In terms of pure form, his best year was 2020, where he averaged more than 50 and took his wickets at 18.

But the year he will always be remembered for is 2019. Arguably his best year with the bat, though poor when bowling. But it’s really about two moments, the 2019 World Cup final and the chase at Headingley.

In one year, he pulled off the best World Cup final heist, and a top five at worst Test innings. It’s not that it is automatically better than some of the years we have mentioned here. But it is nearly unrivalled in terms of pure impact.

Ben Stokes played 38 innings for England in 2019, and two of those might be talked about as long as cricket is mentioned.

***

Ben Stokes is slogging to the short leg side boundary, where he has just cleared a length ball by Trent Boult easily. This time, it’s a juicy full toss, and he smashes it out to deep midwicket with a messy overhit.

But it finds a pocket between long on and deep midwicket. New Zealand’s Martin Guptill rushes around, picks it up, but his throw is weak, and it limps towards the keeper’s end as Stokes is stealing a second.

Then something truly bizarre happens, Stokes’ dive is perfectly timed to have the bat meet the ball, and fly off to the boundary for another four runs. The umpires were confused, and missed that it wasn’t really a boundary. And instead, this weird convolution of events means England are gifted a free four.

The throw was so limp that if the keeper had simply let it go through his legs, it might have barely got to the rope. But it races off the diving bat.

And Stokes gets up, raises his hands up high like a kid who was stealing food from the table, and he’s as confused as everyone else.

It will be this moment he is remembered for.

But England are chasing 242, and never quite getting above the rate, while constantly losing wickets. With just over five overs to go, England had run out of specialist batters with Stokes. And not only would end up with the tail, he would bat with all of them. The final three batters faced one ball combined, as Stokes - and the overthrows - did it on their own.

It’s probably one of the greatest innings in World Cup history, considering the match situation, and it’s his second-best knock of 2019.

This was the year of Ben Stokes. He went from a cult to a religion.

***

2011: Ben Stokes is arrested on a night out. He has only just started playing for England at the time. The charges will eventually be dropped.

2013: Ben Stokes is sent home by the England Lions for unprofessional behaviour. This involved drinking and not listening to team rules.

2014: Ben Stokes misses the T20 World Cup after punching a locker. He fractures his scaphoid.

2017: Ben Stokes knocked out two men and fractured an eye socket in a fight that led to him being charged with affray. He was later found not guilty on the grounds of self-defence for himself and others.

2026: Ben Stokes is dropped from the English cricket team after a fight in a Chelsea nightclub. He was not involved in the original part of the conflict, but he was also out later than the curfew. A curfew that he helped set.

This is not the worst list in the world, but it’s also not the kind you expect from an English cricketer. A footballer, yes. Certainly not a cricket captain.

English leaders used to be gentlemen (landed gentry, upper class, illuminati), and then later they were often college-educated and still the right kind of family. It was only in 2014 (during Stokes’ career) that then ECB chairman Giles Clarke said that Alastair Cook and his family were “very much the sort of people” England wanted for their captains.

Traditionally, English cricket has a type, and Stokes is not it. But he is their most famous player and a captain. He’s not some wild-boy outlier. He’s the face of the English cricket brand, a naturally conservative organisation.

However, he is also a player who appeals to a market that English cricket has been losing. The non-privately educated and Asian fanbase. Stokes speaks to cricket and non-cricket fans.

So in some ways, he is exactly what English cricket wants, a true crossover athlete.

The best barometer of what the English public think about athletes is from the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. Only in the UK could someone receive an award for the most prestigious personality, and not just performance.

In the last 50 years, three cricketers have won the award. Ian Botham in 1981, Freddie Flintoff in 2005 and Ben Stokes in 2019.

James Anderson, Geoffrey Boycott, Kevin Pietersen, David Gower, Alastair Cook, Graham Gooch and Joe Root have never won it. When the BBC likes cricket personalities, it is almost always troubled, dramatic, genius all-rounders.

The British public has a type, and Ben Stokes is it.

***

Ben Stokes is not a normal batter. It’s simply both a strength and weakness.

Brian Lara is perhaps the best example of what a batter does. He gave the bowler the first 20 balls, and the rest were for him. But he wasn’t after the bowlers the whole time. He would gear up when he had a bowler he liked, the ball stopped seaming, or the field was wrong. He was playing to the situation, but allowing for change even within an over. Gear up, down, whenever he needed it.

That is the extreme version of what professional batters do: they block, nudge, turn over strike, punish bad balls, attack, and some huge bashing all when it is needed.

It has never been what Ben Stokes does. He has five of these gears, but he’s not really a nudger. What is different about him is that he doesn’t change gears regularly. He can block for a day, strike rotate on loop, and then go into arch attack mode. But he stays in these zones.

And this limitation to flow with the game is what makes him such a special batter. Because once he chooses the gear, and it’s right, he will not change like others. A normal batter will get themselves in trouble in an extreme situation; Stokes’ batting is already extreme.

That explains some of his greatest innings.

On our KimAppa pod, Robin Uthappa said, “Things have to be dire for Ben Stokes to make up his mind”. So he lacks clarity, until something huge happens, and suddenly he is more mission-driven than the rest of cricket combined.

But his bowling is a better explainer of who he is as a cricketer. It might sound weird, but Stokes has a wonderful outswinger, and very few people talk about it. There is a reason for that. Often, when he comes in, he delivers a couple in a row.

A normal bowler would continue with that attack. Stokes will follow up with a yorker, slower ball, bouncer and one at the top of off-stump. His stock ball is almost non-existent.

It meant that outside two old-ball GOATs (Jasprit Bumrah and Neil Wagner) he is one of the best old-ball flat-wicket seamers. And a lot of it is simply the variety. There is no pattern. When a batter has the conditions in their favour, soft ball, tired bowlers, and the fifth option comes on, usually it is more of the same, or respite. But Stokes bowls fast, on random mode, and it upsets the pattern of normal flat wicket batting.

Now, there could be a reason for this. We see him struggling with accuracy in limited-overs cricket. So instead of fighting that in Tests, he’s gone the complete other way.

It is also a strength that Stokes has two modes of bowling, stock ball and chaos mode. But not if he uses them wrong. And the problem is, Stokes is in love with anarchic bowling. He uses it when he can bowl normally and be even better.

There are technical flaws in his game, with bat path and consistent line and length that ultimately cap his ceiling. But when conditions suit, he’s exactly what you need: a non-traditional batter and bowler.

***

Two times in one year, the world was watching England play cricket, Stokes was in, and the rest of the team was out. All the eyes are watching.

There is an element of control in the 2019 World Cup innings. At Headingley, Stokes is playing and missing Nathan Lyon’s offspin like he’s allergic to the ball. When he decides to hit, it is frantic and lucky. There are missed LBW reviews, fumbles on run outs, and balls that go up, but find grass instead of the fielder.

At the ground, it never feels like it will happen, but the ghost of the World Cup final is there. Could anyone do this? Probably not. But maybe Stokes can.

It would be easy to say it was a lucky innings, but it was also the kind of situation Stokes’ unique batting style and gears work in. It needed three extreme modes over two days, and that’s what he did. This is probably the ultimate Stokes’ innings technically. It involved block mode, single accumulation period and Bazball slogging. And it’s also the ultimate narrative Stokes knock. The world is ending, and only I can save us.

And once he knew what his job was, there was an element of him and the crowd chasing it as one. As if they all morphed into one unlikely army storming Australia’s seemingly impregnable fortress. He didn’t feel like a cricketer for England, but the embodiment of what English cricket wishes it was.

If the World Cup final was tense and needed for a team who had been dominant, Headingley was a celebration for the fans.

Ben Stokes batted so well that he got Jack Leach a glasses contract. That is impact.

***

At the height of James Anderson’s fame, he had a supplement brand as his sponsor, meaning he was on the back of a bus quite a lot. On that ad, there was a line saying his name, and what he had achieved for English cricket.

Footballers in the UK do not get that treatment. So cricketers lead parallel lives to their fellow athletes in England’s biggest sport. There is football famous in the UK, and then everyone else.

The cricketers often feel ignored, despite regularly outperforming their football friends. But it also means a different level of fame. You don’t read a lot of articles calling the cricketers idiots and showing pictures of their toilets for instance.

Being that cricket journalists don’t really break off field stories unless it’s administration, it means the private lives of cricketers can largely stay that way. Yes, we will get the odd story on a Pedalo, or someone missing their dog and screwing up COVID protocol.

But there is no industry around who cricketers are dating, or how their families spend their money. This isn’t really a part of the English media diet.

Joe Root is the better cricketer out of him and Stokes, and it really isn’t close. He has performed so well in so many places, and has way more moments than Stokes overall. But in all three of the major markets, the allrounder is searched for more than Root by a wide margin.

In the UK, I compared Stokes to all the main players of his era, and he beat them all comfortably.

The only players on his level in cricket are the other all-rounders. Botham is still going strong despite retiring before Google existed. And Flintoff is almost as famous for being famous as he was as a cricketer now.

Less than a month after Stokes’ innings at Headingley, the Sun put up a story that you only write when someone is a star. It was technically about a murder tragedy in his family. But it was before he was born.

The story only existed because Stokes was one of the most famous people in England. It was, if anything, really a story about his mother. The Sun paid damages and admitted it should not have been published. And yet, it was Stokes who really paid for his newfound fame.

When you transcend your sport, you are no longer an athlete, you’re a commodity. Your pain sells things, your actions activate SEO and there is an industry built around you.

Stokes is a naturally beastly athlete, but he worked hard to make himself a professional at a similar level. As an all-rounder, he does more work than most. He looked after his body, pushed himself more than most ever do, and he got to the very top of his game. Then when there, fame did what it always does, and it knocked him down.

He is at his best when playing against extreme conditions, but this is a new game.

Ben Stokes was finally the hero he’d always wanted to be, and he found out what that really meant.

***

Stokes has the best captaincy style you can have to win over people watching the game; interventionist. There is no captain in my 20 years of covering that sport who has moved fielders more. This works for people watching the game, because that is how we all think. If the game drags for even a moment, we think you need to make a change. Even former players fall into this trap.

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So the best captains for the masses are the ones who make constant changes. It looks proactive. But most skippers who make endless moves are just following the ball, which is a terrible way to lead the side. Stokes definitely follows the ball. But more than that, he is also proactive.

What usually happens is that Stokes makes a change at around the third ball, and then later in the over there is a score, and he moves them again. Often the bowler will walk back to his mark, then turn to deliver, without having seen what Stokes has done.

On flat pitches, Stokes can change things three times an over. If you asked him what the field was two overs back, there is no way he would remember.

It’s not just interventionist; it’s stream-of-consciousness captaincy. The only leader I have seen make nearly as many changes is Shane Warne. He could be a lot more patient, but if the game was going the wrong way, he would change it every ball.

It is a different form of cricket to play against. Because there is pattern to batting, and people rarely change it. Stokes is really bringing a theory that Eoin Morgan used. England knew their bowling was not the best in the world, but that in the middle overs they would set fields and bowl in a way that would get them regular wickets. Believing that their longer batting lineups would carry them, and most teams would slow down when wickets fell.

Stokes uses a similar idea, in Tests. England don’t mind you trying to score against them in under Bazball, because they think they will eventually lure you into a mistake. But this is where he adds his own flavour. In one over you can face three different fields. The idea makes sense.

But the issue is usually that when something is working, Stokes also changes it. So if you’re watching casually, and someone says, Stokes just got a wicket with a field change, it blows your mind. But it is impossible for him not to get a wicket with a fielding change, because all he ever does is change the field.

There are moments of captaincy genius from him, but also, other times where he’s a petulant child who can’t wait for dinner, so he ends up eating playdoh.

The other thing he shares with Warne is the idea that you’ve got to be prepared to lose to win. I’d argue really that Warne’s idea of giving the other team a sniff is what you see a lot in first-class cricket, where sporting declarations were given to get more points. But in Tests, people would rather die than let another country win. So, for well over 100 years, most teams played to not lose.

Clearly, with the World Test Championship, teams are far more open to this new style. But Stokes was ahead of the game on this, as Robin Uthappa said on our Kimappa pod, “He’s played a part in building the culture of results mattering in Test cricket.”

Of course, what he did differently than Warne was that Stokes would gamble even when England were on top. Or, worse. Sometimes he would give the opposition a chance because he believed so much in the Bazball mantra that he’d press the button when he just didn’t need to.

So under Stokes, England would storm back into games because of their method. But also give up matches that they should’ve never lost.

His best work was always overshadowed by his worst.

As a leader it was clear he was a think from the front guy. Running through walls and assuming everyone would follow. When they didn’t, like in the last Ashes, he was broken by it.

But it is worth remembering that people loved playing under him. Professional grumbler James Anderson loved him, erstwhile critic Stuart Broad as well, and their megarun knight-in-waiting Joe Root was born again under Stokes.

So while we all sit back and critique, pointing out that he couldn’t beat India and Australia at home, and was humbled away, Stokes also still has a fantastic record for an English captain. Of those who have led 15 times, only five have a win percentage above 50.

However, this is in part because there are only two draws in his record. Partly because England don’t play in them, but also because the WTC and wobbleball have ended them. In terms of win/loss ratio, he’s much more middle of the road.

His 1.4 record is closer to Nasser Hussain’s mark than it is to Andrew Strauss’. Under his leadership, Stokes lost 17 Tests - only four captains have lost more for England.

So under Stokes, England has the third-best winning percentage and the sixth-worst losing percentage.

Ben Stokes was prepared to lose to win. And he lost and won more than most England captains.

***

England should have won the 2016 T20 World Cup final, but Brathwaite brained Ben. England should have won the 2017 Champions Trophy, and didn’t make the final. They should have won the 2021 T20 World Cup, but five injuries during the tournament deflated them. Had Stokes not scored an accidental illegal boundary, they might have lost the 2019 edition as well.

And yet, between 2015’s disaster campaign and 2022, they completely changed white ball cricket forever. No more middle overs accumulation, no more bowling dry all the time. They hit middle overs runs and pushed for wickets. But they kept finding ways not to win the main tournaments.

There was a theory that as a batting team, they were set up for the early part of the tournament and bilaterals, but at the end, not as much.

Their batters simply went too hard, too often. Chasing Pakistan’s 138, they were 45/3 when Stokes came in for the 2022 T20 World Cup final. Usually England would have pressed on, hit hard, and let the boundary riders decide their fate.

Instead, Stokes blocked and turned over strike. He had lost a trophy to big hitting, and here he inverted Brathwaite’s plan. But he kept England whole, and he would score 52 from 49 (slower than a Bazball blast) to win the World Cup.

In keeping with the biopic nature of this man’s career, it was his only international 50 in T20s. And as always, it was extreme, this time, extreme nudging. He found clarity, and played his part as the hero who trudges home.

***

Form is the hardest thing to understand in sport. It’s a nebulous concept that is used as a shortcut for something being right, or something being wrong.

Few players ever really control it, in either direction. They just ride waves. But if you are a captain, you cannot always control the results, ten other players are involved in that. You can ensure you are performing.

Stokes has not batted well for years now. In 2025, he might have been at his best with the ball. But with the bat, the last time he averaged more than 40 in Tests was 2020. Some of those years were fine. But from 2024 until now, it’s been a horror show.

Some of that is touring. At home, Stokes has always been a genuine top six batter. But away, he’s been a number seven.

He averages above 37 in England and South Africa, that’s it.

And one issue for him is that in this period, he’s played 15 matches on the road.

Those include ten against two of the best teams in the world, India and Australia. Then he got done by Pakistan going extreme with their pitches as well. Those three places allowed him 12 matches, where he scored 436 runs at 18. So his record is propped up by scoring in the New Zealand series.

There is no real pattern for why he’s struggled. But from his career, we can find two of his main recurring issues are causing problems: spin in Asia and Australian pitches.

Years ago, an analyst for England told me that he did much better on wickets with more bounce than usual. And his fourth innings in Australia certainly followed that pattern. His next score above 50 was in his 18th.

So him making runs in Australia this last series was always unlikely as he was in bad form. But it wasn’t just him that was the issue, England’s batters all seemed to lose form as well.

When things usually go wrong, Stokes just tries harder to right them. At the Gabba, he decided to settle in for a blocky day. He batted for 235 minutes and made 50 runs. England still lost by eight wickets.

Ben Stokes was doing what had always worked for him, but without the form. The warrior was there, without a single weapon to wield.

***

Vine was a six-second video app that changed the world. Before anyone had ever uttered the phrase, pivot to video, Vine was a near-perfect short-format video platform for fun and creativity. Eventually, it got bought by Twitter, then shelved, as everyone had their own short video plays.

Stokes doesn’t have his name on Bazball, but he’s forever linked to it. And while the theory behind it has changed the game, for England, it is now, at the very best, tainted. They couldn’t beat Australia or India, home and away.

The first couple of years were a vibe, though. Watching Trent Boult at Trent Bridge shake his head, India’s body language while Ollie Poped or the first ball boundary of Zak Crawley, these were cultural moments in how cricket was changing.

The problems were due to the fact that England’s mantra was “move fast and break things,” and, as most tech startups have shown us, that only ends in the enshitification of their products.

A smart, controlled Bazball that was constantly adapting to new needs, staying one up ahead of the cricket world, could have been amazing. One single idea spammed until you ruin the PlayStation controller was not ideal.

Ultimately, Bazball was a market disruptor that was taken over by better-run organisations with better talent.

Bazball was cricket’s Vine moment. The game will never be the same again, but others have swallowed it up.

But without the badness of pre-Bazball cricket, and then the wondrous pairing of Ben and Baz, we might not have this current freedom and excitement in Tests. And let’s be honest, the sport isn’t going back.

Bazball was only slightly ahead of the T20 curve that was coming through. But it sped up the change (literally) and also supersized it.

There really are two forms of Test cricket, Before Bazball and After.

Yet, because of the Ashes, and really many things leading up to them, this team that crashed through a wall of Test cricket history will largely be forgotten and mocked.

But that same team was incredible, arrogant, dramatic, entertaining, morally obsessed, hilarious and flawed.

And, isn’t that Ben Stokes?

He built a team completely in his image, and we knew what that was coming in. Winning games no one could, losing ones they really shouldn’t, but forcing us to watch every gloriously entertaining moment.

It was a team that would break, but never bend. Like the man.

***

The career of Ben Stokes makes no sense.

His entire legacy has been in the IPL era, and yet the only real lasting moment he leaves us there is Stephen Fleming being upset at how much he cost.

And that in itself is a story. Because Stokes has never been good at T20s. Which is crazy, because he’s an attacking batter who clears the fence and can bowl at 90MPH.

The only other cricketers like him are Andre Russell or Hardik Pandya, who both conquered T20 at various times.

Stokes averaged 25 in all T20 cricket with the bat, and 31 with the ball at eight and half an over, despite mostly bowling in the middle overs.

But his England career is insane. He lost one of the most famous games in history, then he won another by nudging.

So he was a high-paid IPL player, despite his record being poor before and after and most people have forgotten in the 2017 season he won the most valuable player award. He won and lost a World Cup. And he missed the 2014 edition because he broke his hand punching a locker.

Make of that what you will. But his T20 career was stupid.

After winning the 2019 ODI World Cup, he retired from the format in 2022. Then came back to play in the 2023 edition, like everyone knew he would. But in 2015, he didn’t play, because they dropped him.

At this stage he had been playing ODIs since 2011, but he averaged 15 in them. However with the ball, he’d taken wickets. Crucially, he had 16 against Australia at 26.

But they didn’t pick him.

So Stokes was not selected for the 2015 edition, won the 2019, and didn’t play much after until he had a go at a comeback. It’s a crazy arc.

Then there was his bowling, we were told that he was counting down the number of deliveries he could bowl. His knees were gone, he might bowl offspin or become a specialist batter.

Then he completely reformed his body, lost a bunch of muscle, and redid his knees. And know he is back to overbowling himself in endless spells.

His Test career has really been the most normal. But remember, in the middle of it, he took a mental health break. Clearly that is more common now, but think about this. Stokes will bowl until there is only sand in his knees, he will bowl until his arm falls off. He was willing to play with pain almost every game. But mentally, he stopped.

This is part of the Stokes dichotomy; he is the fearless warrior who runs through walls, but then he is a very sensitive man who mourns his father so much that he can’t play.

Yet through it all, he’s committed to a documentary on himself. I think it is true he feels every emotion, but he performs them as well.

***

WG Grace pressured umpires and changed scores, while believing women shouldn’t play. Sunil Gavaskar wrote in Sunny Days that the West Indian fans “certainly hadn’t graduated from the trees”. Geoffrey Boycott was found guilty of assault in France. Garfield Sobers said that if it wasn’t for the other people around, he would have taken money to play cricket in Rhodesia. Mike Gatting did in fact take those Krugerrands and played in South Africa. On Wasim Akram, “cannot be said to be above suspicion” in the Qayyum report. Wally Hammond probably had syphilis. And Don Bradman didn’t serve for Australia in World War II, and had many questioning how he took over his boss’s stockbroking firm.

These are not how we remember these players, but, of course, they are part of what they did, who they were, and everything else. You can’t just ignore it, but at the same time, it’s not really how they are remembered today.

Ben Stokes is one of the greatest all-rounders England has ever had, and so he will be linked without doubt to players along the lines of Ian Botham and Freddie Flintoff. A part of their legacy is the mucking around. It is the drinking. It is the shenanigans and everything else. In fact, now looking back, it almost feels like they were loved more for it. Were they always at the time? Probably not.

In the UK, this seems to work more in cricket. Stokes appeals to non-cricket fans, because he’s more like a footballer. He’s not polished, he’s fiery. He didn’t go to a nice school. He’s someone they’d like to have a drink with.

Compare that to the team England has after Stokes was dropped (or rested, or suspended) at the Oval. Ten out of the 11 England players were privately educated. Stokes isn’t just playing-acting a different personality; he is different.

The entire English cricket community finally had a moment of reflection after looking into racism and exclusion in their game. That ended up in the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket report, which dropped while Stokes was preparing for a Test, and he had to do a press conference.

In his statement, he said, “I am Ben Stokes, born in New Zealand, a state-educated pupil who dropped out of school at 16 with one GCSE in PE. I needed help with the spelling and grammar in this speech and I am currently sitting here as the England men's Test captain.”

***

Ben Stokes is flying up and back. He’s Spiderman, the world’s best goalkeeper and a Cirque du Soleil performer - all at once. The ball hits his right hand, which he has thrown up backhand, instead of using his left. Then he rolls towards the boundary, rises, and points over the crowd.

Behind him are wide, gaping mouths. These lucky people are probably never going to have something this amazing happen that close to them ever again. This is a freak event; few people in the game of cricket would ever have been able to pull this off.

But let’s rewind a moment, why is Stokes diving up and back for this ball? It’s a slog sweep by South Africa’s Andile Phehlukwayo, and it was hit pretty low. If Stokes was on the rope or backed up when he saw the shot, he would have caught this on his chest.

This was a series of mistakes, saved by a freak moment, and celebrated like a superhero landing in a crowd. Ben Stokes took one of the greatest catches ever, because he was in the wrong spot. His mistakes are still highlights.

His legacy will be fascinating in the future. He doesn’t have the stats of other greats, he has massive weak spots, and even things where he just should have been better.

But despite his flaws, maybe even because of them, when he needed to, he performed feats of cricketing genius that should last forever. He’s not perfect, and that is what makes him so fascinating.

Ben Stokes runs through walls. Sometimes the wall wins. For those watching, often the collision with the wall is all we remember.

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Glenn Phillips is bowling. He is the only Kiwi player preparing during lunch. The bowlers, proper full timers, have finished their warmups. The fielders are hovering around, making it look like they have already taken catches.

But Phillips is bowling his offspin. His black cap is on the surface behind him, and he’s trying to rag the ball. He finishes his spell just as the bell for the end of lunch is run. He picks up the rubber warm up stumps and starts to take them off the field. Before a coach sees him, and realises that is absolutely not the job of a man who has just made a hundred. Then he jogs into a slight gallop as his team is about to huddle on the other side of the ground.

All of this is about an hour after making his first Test hundred. He isn’t really required to do bowling preparation now, but he needs and wants to. At all times, he needs to be doing something. Today, that was preparing to bowl after smashing a hundred.

Glenn Philips has a switch, and it’s always on.

***

Phillips’ Test career is one of cameos. He’s not bad, he’s just not around that long. When he comes in to bat at the Oval, it is after a day of his teammates having played those kinds of innings. Daryl Mitchell and Rachin Ravindra hit the ball as well as he did, but they both got out when set.

New Zealand are struggling, and a little punchy 40 will get his team back on track. And that is perfect, because it’s what he is made for.

In 32 innings, he’s only made nine single figure scores, which is decent for someone who averaged 34 coming into this match. 14 times he has passed 25, but he only has one score in the 80s.

He is bustling, threatening and promising, but not everlasting.

It looks like one of those high-energy, short-form knocks is coming. His second delivery, he blocks the ball, but off the middle of the bat to the rope. That is a strength and weakness for him. His hands grip the bat really tight, meaning that even when he blocks the ball, it flies. The issue with that is his edges almost always carry. But this one is from the dead middle, and it flies to the boundary.

A moment later, he picks up a three with the same shot. So he’s seven from four, and all he has done is block.

His first attacking shot comes from a short ball by debutant Sonny Baker, and he launches at it. Back of a length cross bat shots have not been ideal on this surface. But for him, it’s a magnificent option.

Baker overpitches the next ball with a big hooping inswinger, and he drills a cover drive to the rope. After smashing one past Josh Tongue’s face later, he’s 19 off 12. Reminder, New Zealand were in a tricky position when he came in. And he’s just blasting them back. I mean, he’s just being Glenn Phillips.

When he leaves a ball that is short and wide, he is actually starts laughing. To himself. There are some people who perform for others, but for Phillips, every reaction and overreaction seems to be completely for his own amusement.

Jofra Archer returns in the harsh afternoon light and bounces Phillips with a Wagner field spread for the short ball. And he mistimes the first one for two, meaning he’s now 35 from 24 balls. To be honest, it was all easy until this point.

But what happens next is different gravy, to quote the English cricketers.

***

Phillips sometimes has a faintly ridiculous air to him. When he faces, he bends over in an exaggerated manner, before snapping back up like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. At this point he pops his butt out. But you’re already looking at his backlift; it’s high and mighty, but never still. His hands are so eager for the ball, he’s played four shots before the delivery is bowled.

It’s an active stance, switched on in neon lights.

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Jack and Meg White are sitting down on a trunk. There is a rogue power cord going up Meg’s leg. Behind her, a human skull hides. A random light hangs down behind Jack. He is wearing a 1960s country music homage, and Meg’s in a white tradwife dress. Down near her feet are peanut shells. Apparently, the entire thing is supposed to look like an abstract image of an Elephant, the name of the album.

It was the record that launched the White Stripes around the world. But if you are a cricket fan, the first thing you will notice is the bat in Jack’s hand.

By 2003, I already owned White Blood Cells and De Stijl. So when Elephant came out, I bought it straight away, and from the moment it was in my hand, the cricket bat was the only thing that stood out.

Why was a Detroit band holding a cricket bat? The reason is a music promoter named John Baker, who often travelled with a bat he had used with his family years ago and gotten from his young cousin. He claims to have left it in Detroit, and Jack then used it as a prop.

Baker did work in the music industry and with the White Stripes. But there is one more part of the story, the cousin that Baker speaks about is Kane Williamson. Meaning that one of the most important albums of all time has a cricket bat on the cover, and it may in fact be from one of the most important batters.

This is not a story that seems to have been verified by multiple sources, just the guy telling his story. But if it’s correct, then it would be completely off-brand, as Williamson is the least likely player in our sport to rock out with his cock out.

Kane Williamson is not rock’n’roll. To paraphrase Jack White, he is the boy to warm your mother’s heart. Or, steady her ship.

***

Former Test batter Ian Ward is confused. He’s conducting a masterclass on Sky, and something has just been said to him that’s extraordinary. Kane Williamson is in the Nursery Ground nets, and he’s saying that he tries to hit the top part of the ball. A cricket ball is less than three inches high. Most people are just trying to hit it, and Williamson sees the ball so well that he doesn’t need to look at all of it. Part of this is because he plays the ball so late, he always has more time.

So while the world is biomechanically studying Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s mega backlift, Kane Williamson is leaving the game.

The Kiwi legend can hit sixes, but he is a nudger and deflector by trade. There is no meeting the ball early, or power stances. He waits until it is under his eyes, and then usually tries to run it safely through backward point or third.

It is a similar method to Rahul Dravid, but Williamson doesn’t quite have the same elegance or big forward press. He hovers around his crease, deflects the ball, and runs. It is a scoring method that has been used since the 1800s. Simple, elegant and very repeatable.

Playing it under his eyes means he always has the best view, there is no thrusting when the ball seams or spins, and he has maximum control on the ball. It is the Volvo of batting styles, but we’re heading towards a Maserati era. Will there ever be another Williamson-like batter, or is he the last of a dying breed?

In more ways than one. When he made his Test debut, Ricky Ponting, Kumar Sangakkara, Jonathan Trott and Rahul Dravid were still batting at first drop. Number four had taken over as where you put the best bat, but threes were still very important. By the end of his career, we were in the era of the false three. Anyone with warm blood who owned a bat had a chance of being at first drop for their country.

The floor has fallen out of number threes entirely. The best bats try and stay at five now, not even at four, and Raymon Reifer and Jacob Bethell have to do the hard work.

Yet, nothing changes for Kane Williamson. He bats at number three, because that’s his spot. Cricket often evolved around him. But he didn’t flinch.

***

Kane Williamson averages almost 50 in Asia, which includes Test hundreds in Sri Lanka, India, the UAE, Pakistan and Bangladesh. His record is not good in Sri Lanka or India. But a player from New Zealand having hundreds in five different Asian nations is almost unthinkable. The land of the long white cloud is where spin goes to die. Growing up, he wouldn’t have been facing world-class spinners, or batting on turning tracks.

In total, he’s made 570 more runs than anyone from his nation in Asia, and has Ross Taylor cleared by 740, despite playing the same number of matches there.

But what’s most remarkable about Williamson is the fact he averages the same against spin in Asia as he does against pace everywhere. And he still averages almost 50 against the fast bowlers.

There are players with incredible records in Asia, but that is because they are specialists. That is not Williamson.

Since 1970, no one averages more at home. Williamson is a beast in New Zealand, and yet can score in Asia. That is not a normal batter. For the Kiwis, it means they have an incredibly multi-skilled player.

A green top, a dust bowl, Kane does both.

***

Walter Hadlee led New Zealand to England in 1949. For that series, he tried to do two wild things: pick a Fijian batter who often played barefoot and choose a team without much bowling to ensure they drew every match. The first idea didn’t come to fruition, but the second worked.

New Zealand leaders are simply built different. To this day, Jeremy Coney remains one of the most original thinkers in the sport. A man who openly trolled England when they made fun of this team. Graham Gooch (or Mike Gatting in Coney’s recollection) said it was like facing a World XI at one end (Richard Hadlee) and the Ilford 2nd XI at the other end (everyone else). Coney had t-shirts made that said “Ilford Seconds” and then won the series.

Martin Crowe was a New Zealand leader and their greatest ever batter. That would be enough, but he was also a cricket savant. He was the first batter to understand and conquer reverse swing. Wasim Akram still talks about him. He was the first person to use a genuine pinch-hitting middle-order player as an opener, and also open the bowling with spin in ODIs. Later, he would pioneer a new form of cricket that was not quite T20, but had elements of it before that format was invented.

Since then, the Kiwis have had Stephen Fleming and his many crowded offside fields. Later, he would be the man in charge of CSK when they did well. And Brendon McCullum, who set up a limited-overs system that England used to win World Cups, and then took over as coach to help them try the same thing in Tests, changing the game entirely.

This is one of the more interesting captaincy histories in our game. Theatric, cunning and just weird. No two alike, all of them full of wondrous sharp edges.

And then came Kane.

As a captain, he went within several overthrows of winning a World Cup, but then was victorious in the first World Test Championship. No other New Zealand captain has had that level of success. But none before him had the bowling attack he was gifted with.

Even so, his win percentage is 55, which is exceptional. However, his stand-in and replacement, Tom Latham, has the same Test record.

What Williamson’s reign really shows is the continued improvement of New Zealand cricket.

Outside the Crowe-Hadlee-Ilford era of the 1980s, which seems like a blip, New Zealand cricket has been in constant improvement. He is the chief custodian who took on that legacy.

Because of a lack of people, the Blackcaps have passed on institutional knowledge in a way other nations haven’t.

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The issue with judging captains is often tied to how good their teams are. And Williamson is also a continuation of a wonderful think-tank. However, he should get praise for what he has done because even within the hive mind of New Zealand cricket, Williamson became the queen bee.

Maybe what he has really done is taken their best bits, and let go of their throbbing eccentricities. A nation of John Lennons, finally, needed a Paul McCartney to bring it together.

To get where he did, he stood on their shoulders to reach heights the rest could not. But he did that carefully, wearing a harness and having first completed a thorough safety test.

***

If someone online says Kane Williamson is a great batter, within 12 seconds, someone must reply with his record against the best teams. It’s Kane’s law. You cannot praise him without questioning.

He averages more than 50 against six Test nations, which in any other era would be automatic legend status. However, the problem is the ones he struggles against.

One is Ireland from only a single match. Fine. But the others are Australia, India and England.

It is very rare for a batter with a 50-plus average to not be good against the best attacks. While the world talks about flat track bullies and statpadders, most greats also do well against their best opponents. If not all of them, at least a couple. And Williamson hasn’t.

At least he has a great record against South Africa with six hundreds in 12 matches. Alas, the issue there is that three of those hundreds are against the South African D team that toured New Zealand in 2024. That does change things, but that only drops his average to 48, which is still more than solid.

But, all of that is from home Tests. In four matches (crazy that is all he has played in a 16-year career) in South Africa, he averages 21. But given it is from such few matches, you can give him a pass.

If you look at his record when in Australia, England and India, you will see again, he has struggled there. Australia is the one that holds up the best, but England and India from a combined 17 Tests is bizarrely low.

For a man who grew up on green tops, England makes no sense. For a man who played the spinning ball so well, the numbers in India also make no sense. It does lead you to believe it was about the quality of the bowling.

Against the best bowling attacks and biggest teams, he is almost 30 runs worse than the rest.

I have run the numbers a bunch of ways, and I can’t find a pattern. Against England, you can argue that Jimmy Anderson tormented him. But he is hardly alone there. And that was for nine dismissals, no one else has him more than six. And for India, Zaheer Khan gave him early trouble, but again, there is no obvious pattern.

The Australians all do well, Starc the best, without him really being destroyed. In terms of Cummins, Williamson has been dismissed by Miguel (real ones remember) more than Pat. He has a good record against Josh Hazlewood, and bodied Mitch Johnson. Mohammed Shami never troubled him, and neither did Morne Morkel.

But this is an issue when it comes to Tests. Some will point to short Test series, and that makes sense, until you peel it back. Two Test series mean that Williamson can’t cash in when on top, but he hardly got on top.

Is this a weird blip or a real sign? We put him lower in the Art of Batting partly because of this. Yet, in ODI cricket, he has been great against England and more than decent against India, though not as much against Australia.

Cummins (Pat, who dismissed him once in Tests) was interviewed by Adam Gilchrist years ago, and asked about Kane Williamson. Cummins said that he was not a player who gave them problems. It is obviously true looking at the stats. But it’s also a very weird thing to say about a player of his level.

When everyone is watching New Zealand in Tests, usually Williamson fails. The minute they turn away, he’s a monster. He did his best work in the dark.

***

The 2019 one-day international World Cup semi-final is a lie. It was not one day, it was two, because the rain came and the match restarted the following morning. That gave New Zealand a weird advantage and certainly changed the shape of the match.

But the Kiwis had another head start in that match; Williamson walked out on that surface and worked out what a good total was. This was the World Cup when cricket started to change. England was blitzing, and it was about all-rounders, bouncers and bossing the middle overs.

Yet, Williamson just knocked the ball around, content that he was right. His limited-overs cricket feats are barely part of his overall canon. He made runs in both formats, but slowly. He could often get left behind in big scoring matches.

His skill was really on the surfaces that suited bowlers. Which is generally what happens in World Cups. And there, while his strike rate remained platonic, his record went through the roof.

Part of it was simply that he would bat to the conditions, and not his strike rate. It ultimately cost him in T20s, but his ambivalence to anything bar the conditions allowed him to make a huge impact on tougher pitches.

You pair Williamson with a good bowling line-up, be it New Zealand or even Sunrisers Hyderabad, and you have a very interesting team built for clutch games. On a flat smash ‘em surface, they might get lost. But as the tournament goes on and the surfaces get more two-paced, suddenly he is the man for the job.

When fast runs were needed, not so much. In the 2021 T20 World Cup final, he arguably did his best work but also caused many issues for his team. After ten overs, New Zealand were 57/1, and he was on 18 from 19. He eventually came good, taking on Glenn Maxwell and Starc. So his overall score reads 85 from 48. Which is great. But after ten overs, Australia had also lost one wicket, for 25 more runs, and the match was over.

On a bowler’s surface, there were few better players to have in your team, ever. On a flat one, he was really often a complete liability. Often saving his best hitting (which he could actually do) until so late it had no impact.

In modern T20, he works as an insurance batter. If the ball is nipping around you use him early to put out the fire. But when the sixes are being hit, you never want him at the crease.

Kane Williamson was not a bad limited-overs player, just a thoroughly complicated one. In the epic group game between Australia and New Zealand at the 2015 World Cup, where Australia collapsed and McCullum went for net run-rate, Williamson was a steady hand on the tiller. Scoring at less than a run a ball until the final delivery as 19 wickets fell for 303 runs.

Then with his team 9 wickets down, he dumped Pat Cummins into the stands to win the match. That was Kane Williamson the white-ball batter. A man looking for calm in a sea of noise.

***

When Don Bradman turned up, he scored at levels no one had ever fantasised about before. And yet, there were still old heads talking about Victor Trumper. A player who couldn’t average 40 in Tests.

To people who missed Trumper entirely, that made no sense. Those who saw him got it.

Martin Crowe averages almost ten fewer than Kane Williamson. For many people, the conversation stops there. But Crowe was an experience, near technical perfection, yet also so aesthetically pleasing. He was a genius, too, and perhaps missed his best years as his knees ended his career early.

In my book, Crowe is rated 40, eight places below Williamson.

So the average is misleading, but even the match factor shows that Williamson has more impact. Though it does bring the gap down a lot.

The key difference for me is not batting average, but impact in wins. When Williamson makes runs, the Black Caps often do great. Clearly, he had a much better bowling attack than Crowe batted behind. But even so, the third-best mark ever in wins and draws is pretty special.

If you look at the match factor in these games, you’ll see that Williamson is miles ahead of Crowe here. But Crowe is better in losses. Does that add to the mystique of the genius holding up his team on his own?

But the real reason Crowe is held so high is how he went against the best sides. His toughest attacks to face were the great West Indian and Pakistani attacks, plus those from Australia and South Africa. Williamson has the last two attacks, plus England and India.

Crowe averaged 45 against the great West Indies, and almost 60 against Pakistan’s spin and reverse swing. But he is known for what he did against Australia. He averaged almost 50, which is already good, but it was 67 when he crossed the Ditch.

It is the third-best mark of any player in Australia. He was so good there that many Australians had him as their hero in the 80s and early 90s.

Kane Williamson has been a freak. But New Zealand cricket is often measured on how they go against Australia. That is the dragon on their doorstep, the biggest, baddest, loudest brother.

Crowe won series home and away against the bullies, making runs for fun, and corrupting the hearts of the locals. And Williamson has almost no impact on Australian cricket.

For Crowe, there is something else. Harder to see in stats or even highlights packages. He was a punk rock mad scientist. There was an edge to him.

Williamson has none of that. He is like a robot on a factory floor, with continued precision until a part needs replacing. Williamson is better, but Crowe hits different.

***

International cricket is hard. For nations with big money or populations, things go wrong. For New Zealand, a place without much of either, it’s way tougher. It took them 39 years to win a Test series. They became world-class in the 1980s, but in the 1990s fell back off a cliff. For most of their time they have been fighting clubs, counties and franchises to use their own players.

And so maybe what they needed when their second greatest player came along, was simply, calmness.

Or maybe that is just Kane Williamson.

Players at his level often have cool nicknames or phrases attached to them. Punter, Universe Boss and Captain Cool. But there is a phrase associated with Williamson, and it’s not like them.

Steady the ship.

It even comes with its own cricket cosplay. Is there a less sexy image in cricket than a New Zealander wearing a captain’s hat in a ground? But there is something sweet and comforting about it. Maybe that is also inspired by the man.

You can’t imagine Williamson inspiring people to wear coconut bikinis or denim g-strings. He politely shows composed dad energy, you wouldn’t be surprised if he was a volunteer firefighter, and he’s clearly a concerned citizen who pays his taxes early. His facial hair is not a fashion statement, but a big bushy beard. His voice sounds like someone ordering a coffee after a 5k fun run.

This is his image.

The White Stripes spent a long time crafting and then perfecting their tri-colour aesthetic. Their image was a beautifully executed extension of their music. It is supposed to look cool.

The White Stripes are artists; Williamson is a tradesman.

He trims his beard, makes sure his hair is the right length, and runs the ball down to third. That kind of man gets a phrase that he deserves. Because in cricket matches, things go wrong. He tried to fix that.

Kane Williamson is not rock’n’roll; he’s equilibrium.

When New Zealand were in trouble, he was calm, stable, and controlled the situation. His greatness was the ability to soothe a nation. When Kane Williamson played, New Zealand was at their most stable. For a generation, their ship was steady.

As Walt Whitman said for a slightly different topic, “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done”.

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The Women’s World Cup is here. And as we like to do here, we have our team maps to work out who does what and when.

These numbers come from our special sauce algorithms, which tell you what you need to know about each team. Will Australia win? Who is the most likely team to beat them? And how will New Zealand go back-to-back without any batting?

Welcome to the Women’s World Cup team maps.

***

Even though Australia lost the semi-final of the last T20 (and ODI) World Cup, they have a 10-2 record in T20Is in this time period. Both the losses came against India, who are the only team to defeat them in a series since then. They swept the rest of the sides - England, New Zealand and the West Indies.

Of the top five ranked teams, they are clearly the best on three out of six metrics - powerplay batting, middle overs batting and powerplay bowling. Georgia Voll is the attacking opener, while Beth Mooney is the anchor in this partnership.

These two have also been Australia’s most successful batters in the middle phase. They are both incredible at avoiding dots and running between the wickets. However, Phoebe Litchfield and Ellyse Perry have both been underwhelming for Australia in this period. But their franchise T20 stats are solid. Plus Ash Gardner hasn’t played many T20Is, and we know she’s good at cricket.

Strangely, they seem to taper off at the end of the innings. But they have plenty of all-rounders, and they bat very deep. If they can work out Annabel Sutherland’s optimal batting position, that can further strengthen them. Probably a floater role in a collapse situation makes the most sense looking at her conventional gameplay.

Sutherland has also, by far and away, been Australia’s best seamer. She has the most new ball wickets for them. Megan Schutt and Alana King have also done well early on, while Kim Garth’s performances have been a bit below par in the first six overs. The two leggies starred through the middle overs, and nobody can seem to score off Sutherland either. Molineux hasn’t played too much cricket due to injuries. Once again, they are below par at the death. The issue isn’t wickets, it’s that teams have managed to find boundaries off them.

If we compare India to them, they are significantly better at the death on either side of the ball. Richa Ghosh and Harmanpreet Kaur do the bulk of the work for India in the final four overs, and they’re successful at it in the WPL too. A set Jemimah Rodrigues can also utilize this phase very well, plus they have the high-intent Bharti Fulmali in their team too.

They’re also a strong powerplay batting team, thanks to Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana. However, Jemimah - who usually bats at No.3 - likes to take her time and settle in when the field is up. Like Australia, both the openers are also effective after the field restrictions are over, and Jemimah is also elite. Harmanpreet Kaur is more of an anchor from overs 7 to 16. In the England series, we also saw Yastika Bhatia start quick in the powerplay and then slow down after the field was spread out.

However, India have really struggled with the new ball. They go for a few runs, and don’t take loads of wickets. None of their main quicks have provided that impetus. WPL star Nandani Sharma is also in the squad, but she wasn’t hugely successful in the powerplay in the tournament either. Deepti Sharma has been very economical, but she didn’t get to bowl in this phase in the recent series in England.

But they catch up in the middle period, actually edging out Australia ever so slightly on our team maps. They have heaps of quality spin bowling options, and their seamers have also taken wickets.

Their death overs success is primarily down to them protecting runs at the end. Sree Charani is their main bowler here. And while Deepti and Arundhati Reddy have been a bit expensive, they’re among India’s most used bowling options at the end. Radha Yadav also has excellent stats for India, though from a very small sample. Plus, this is exactly where Nandani and Shreyanka Patil were at their best in the WPL.

India were on a series winning run in T20Is after they exited the last T20 World Cup in the group stage. Even after the ODI World Cup victory, they beat Australia in Australia in the shortest format. But they’re coming into the tournament after losing 1-4 in South Africa and 1-2 in England. And in truth, outside of middle overs bowling, they weren’t up to the mark on these two tours.

Let’s compare India to the team they most recently lost, England. Both these teams are very similar in terms of win-loss ratios since the last mega event. But the hosts are not as good as India with the bat in any period of the game, though they are above average at everything.

Nat Sciver-Brunt has been their best batter in the powerplay, and she mainly bats at 3 and 4. Their openers have been susceptible to getting out early, and they don’t really score at uber-attacking rates either. They did promote Alice Capsey up top this summer, so they’ll hope she can set the tone of their innings if she’s opening.

They do get better in the middle overs. When their openers get past the early phase, they are able to cash in. Sciver-Brunt and Heather Knight provide stability in the middle, though it’ll be interesting to see how fast they score after a good platform. Capsey and Amy Jones also performed well versus India recently.

Knight and Sophie Ecclestone have been their key batters at the death, but off late the left-handed Freya Kemp has also smashed the ball in the last few overs. And if Sciver-Brunt is set, she can also damage opposition attacks.

England are a better new ball bowling unit on our maps than India. On raw stats, there’s actually not much between them and Australia. But it’s been harder to score runs in England in the first six overs, and if that trend continues this World Cup, they should be fine. Lauren Bell is their main wicket-taker in this phase, and they also have spin options in Linsey Smith and Charlie Dean that can take the new ball. Lauren Filer has been an economical seamer early in the innings, but she hasn’t taken plenty of wickets.

They are 7% better in the middle overs. Usually, you’d expect Ecclestone to be the main player here. She is still good, of course, but Charlie Dean has been even more exceptional. Also, Ecclestone’s wickets have dried up a bit this summer. And at the end, it’s Ecclestone, Bell, Dean, Linsey and Issy Wong that have bowled the majority of the overs and done a solid job.

Remember, they also have the 18-year-old Tilly Corteen-Coleman who was superb in the Hundred last year. She bowled well in both the powerplay and middle, so it will be interesting to see how they deploy her overs if she starts.

***

This is a weird sentence, but now we have looked at the favourites, let’s look at the finalists of the last T20 World Cup - New Zealand and South Africa.

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