Feeling Ben Stokes

And Tom Latham's long wait.

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.