Ben Stokes breaks sixes record with devastating innings for Durham

They’re used to dealing with floods at New Road but on Friday the famous old ground was hit by a hurricane. It went by the name of Ben Stokes, England’s newly coronated Test captain unleashing a record-breaking 88-ball 161 on his return for Durham and coming agonisingly close to striking six sixes in a single over.

Only two men in the history of first-class cricket have achieved the feat – Sir Garfield Sobers in 1968 and Ravi Shastri in 1985 – and once Stokes sent the first five deliveries of Josh Baker’s 20th over into the crowd, bringing up a 64-ball century, a hush descended. Could a third member be about to join this elite club?

It was not to be, Stokes duffing his contact with the final ball from Worcestershire’s 18-year-old left-arm spinner and seeing a mere four result. Some 34 runs had been raided from the over but you would scarcely have known it, Stokes recoiling in frustration at an opportunity missed. What a ridiculous sport.

Nevertheless, it was a memorable moment in an innings that still secured two slices of history. Stokes had eclipsed Paul Collingwood’s 75-ball hundred against Somerset in 2005 – previously the fastest by a Durham player – and after lunch, when Brett D’Oliveira was carved into the stand that bears the leg-spinner’s family name, he had secured the record of 17 sixes in a County Championship innings.

And having espoused a team-first philosophy in his first press conference as England captain in the week, one can only assume that Stokes drew more satisfaction from the position of outright dominance that he and David Bedingham, 135 from 175 balls, had secured in this Division Two encounter.

Declaring on 580 for six once Stokes and Bedingham had holed out, Durham set about their mission to