England's Ben Stokes-sized hole

The gravitational pull of one man looks set to cause tectonic shifts across English cricket.

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.