There has been a fair amount of fretting about the prospect of Ben Stokes, England Test captain. Even after a weary Joe Root called him before Easter to explain he was stepping down from the job, his wife, Clare, immediately said “oh no, oh no, oh no”, knowing full well what was likely to follow.
Yet as Stokes strolled into the Colin Milburn Lounge at Durham’s Riverside Ground on Tuesday, decked out in grey-blue England training gear and that fiery red hair slicked back like a Peaky Blinder, he looked like a man at peace with the promotion. This may be an almighty Hail Mary from English cricket, one that heaps even more responsibility on to the shoulders of a champion all-rounder who needed a spell out of the game last year, but you would scarcely have known it.
