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‘Sky is the limit‘
Star Sport Desk
Ben Stokes was in sensational form and, with clear thinking, determination and phenomenal ability, fashioned England’s series-levelling victory against West Indies in the second Test at Old Trafford on Monday.
Stokes’ match haul of 254 runs and three wickets earned him the player-of-the-match award and he has also outdone West Indies captain Jason Holder to become the world’s top-ranked Test all-rounder while also attaining a career-best third position among batsmen in the Men’s Test Player Rankings.
The all-rounder’s Manchester masterclass convinced captain Joe Root that the team are “in the presence of greatness” and that sky was the limit for “Mr Incredible”.
“He’s Mr Incredible, I suppose,” Root said, comparing Stokes to the muscular cartoon superhero. “He looks a bit like him, and will probably end up the same shape too.I think the sky’s the limit for him really, when you watch how he goes about things, there’s no reason why he can’t keep performing this consistently.”
As for Stokes’s man-of-the-match effort, Root said it “doesn’t surprise me”. “He seems to want to keep getting better and better and we’re seeing those results out on the field.”
It is one thing to identify the time to up the tempo but another to do that as smoothly as Stokes did, with the 29-year-old’s natural talent now coupled with heightened tactical awareness.
“To have such a complete game, and so many different gears at your disposal, allows you the ability to keep getting better,” said Root.
The past year has seen Stokes play a key role in England’s World Cup final win over his native New Zealand at Lord’s before his staggering 135 not out secured a one-wicket victory over Australia in the third Ashes Test at Headingley.
And Root, back skippering England after missing West Indies’ four-wicket win in the first Test -- where Stokes deputised as captain -- to attend the birth of his second child, forecast more of the same from the team’s talisman.
“If he continues to read situations the way he is, and keeps the confidence that he’s playing with at the moment, there’s no reason why we can’t continue to see such brilliant performances as we have done this week, and over the last 12 months really.”
Even in their four-wicket defeat in the series opener at Southampton Stokes managed 89 runs and six wickets.
“I think everyone understands that we are watching a player at the peak of his powers, at the peak of world cricket, delivering time and time again,” Root said.
“We have to savour that, we have to appreciate that and understand that we are -- without trying to pump his tyres too much -- in the presence of greatness.”
Stokes’s relentlessness was encapsulated when he dived to stop a boundary off his bowling, leading former England captain Mike Atherton to write in his column in The Times: “There will be many moments of match-turning magnificence that we remember when Ben Stokes’s career is done. The World Cup final, the Headingley Ashes Test and, no doubt, many more to come. There are also minor vignettes that will be forgotten; smaller, more insignificant pieces of action that of themselves have had little impact upon the game, but which demonstrate what an inspirational cricketer he is to those around him.”
Stokes played down his contribution, telling the BBC: “Everyone has put their hands up and contributed to a great win.”
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