You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. But if it then comes back and goes again? Well, really, you’ve probably had fair warning.
That has been England’s lot regarding Ben Stokes the all-round cricketer over the past year and a bit: a long spell when there was little to no bowling as part of the captain’s brief; followed by a tantalising reminder at the start of this summer of the full working thing; to now, and the three-match Test series against Sri Lanka that began in Manchester on Wednesday, in which the 33-year-old will play no part at all because of a hamstring injury.
