Ben Stokes finds right Test vibes with blend of craft and aggression

There are still some unchanging certainties in the English cricketing summer; many of which were on show on a humid, bellicose second day of this second Test.

Specialist wicketkeepers are busy at the crease, all bottom-handed crunch and ferrety shovels. Anything with the name Strauss attached to it will be accepted as objective, unchallenged gospel (call it The Strauss Hundred and we’d never have heard a whimper). Old Trafford will continue to remake the world as a series of red glass boxes, the compulsory template for any licenced Manchester architect. Perhaps the eastern stand, currently flattened, might bring something new. We might get a grey box or a green box.

And most certain of all, from the moment Simon Harmer’s first delivery was whumped with real violence over deep square leg an hour into the morning’s play, Ben Stokes was always going to score a hundred here.

Not just because of the simultaneous release of his documentary film: a commercial enterprise, but also a brutally honest thing that might just offer some succour with its unblinking honesty on processing life through the blurred lens of everyday mental health issues.

It is a new thing Stokes is doing. Has anyone at his level – captain of the national team, world star – been so open about how it feels to manage these demons, while also simultaneously enjoying the thrills of peak year achievement?

Towards the end of the day, as Jack Leach and Ollie Robinson batted on, there was even time for a wonderful tableau on the England balcony: Stokes in Lennon-shades, hair swept back, sipping unbranded water; Brendon McCullum next to him, all beards and shades and guns, hundred in the bank, game tipping their way, Stuart Broad, in sleeveless singlet also loitering