Ben Stokes jokingly claimed to be English cricket’s John Terry because he was able to celebrate a major trophy win without playing a single minute in the final.
At least by being thousands of miles away from Chennai Super Kings’ IPL victory over the Gujarat Titans he didn’t go the full Terry and don a yellow shirt and join in as if he’d hit the winning runs himself. Stokes posted a photo of himself fully focused and watching the final on his phone on Monday, but the truth is that his mind has been on something else for quite some time now.
And while he is utterly hell bent on beating the Aussies this summer, he is also determined that success in the Ashes will not be the crowning glory for his team and their Test revolution. Rather than the end goal, it is a staging post on the way to something more fulfilling. Something bigger and something more satisfying.
What that is, Stokes doesn’t even know himself. Who would have thought they would score 500 runs in a day like they did in Pakistan over the winter? Who would have thought they would win 10 out of 11 matches and lose the 12th by one solitary run?
Stokes is having fun exploring the boundaries of what is achievable and starting with Ireland this week the possibilities are endless: "Anything is possible I think,” said Stokes. “If you have the backing to go out and do it. The thing about letting guys go out and be free and stuff like that is that you just don’t know where their ability ends, if that makes sense.
“I think what we have seen over the last year is that the same players who have been playing for a while can go a lot higher in terms of their potential. They understand that they might be better than they thought they were. The best thing about this team is that we don’t know the destination. This Ashes series is just part of the journey that we’ve been on and will continue to be on afterwards.
“This Ashes isn’t the thing that’s going to define us. The occasion is bigger, but we’re still going out to play the way we have for the last year. It’s just that you get this nice little urn if you win it.”
This may well be another masterful piece of Stokes’ man management, trying to get his players to play the game and not the occasion, knowing full well deep down that it may define several careers, especially with the level of anticipation for the series. But there is the small matter of Ireland to come first. A warm up game in everything but name, and a chance for a stall to be set out and any anxieties to be allayed.
“We fully respect the opposition as we do every team we play,” added Stokes. “But it is fair to say the team would be different if it was the Ashes. The risk and reward for us with a couple of players was not worth it. It is hard to ignore the excitement for this summer and it's great that we have such a big build up to another series, although I don’t know how this compares to 2005.”
If Stokes can pull of the same result as the team 18 years ago, then he really will have done a John Terry as captain, leader, legend
Probable Teams
England: Crawley, Duckett, Pope, Root, Brook, Stokes (c), Bairstow (wk), Broad, Potts, Tongue, Leach
Ireland: McCollum, Moor, Balbirnie (c), Tector, Stirling, Tucker (wk), Campher, McBrine, Adair, Hume, Young
Umpires: Adrian Holdstock and Paul Wilson
TV Umpire: Kumar Dharmasena
