Impressive Ben Stokes passes first exam as England’s Test captain

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.

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Indeed, over the next 20 minutes or so Stokes spoke with impressive assuredness. Had he coveted the role? Not at all, but he would never turn it down either. Did he still need time to decide when Rob Key, the new director of men’s cricket, offered him the role? A little, he said, which turned out to be barely a minute. Can he yank the handbrake on a team who have won just one of their past 17 Tests? The only way is up, Stokes replied, unwittingly channelling his inner Yazz and the Plastic Population.

Even the Bristol incident in 2017, a subject Stokes has not always enjoyed engaging with publicly, was met with good grace. “Back then, no, I’d have never pictured sitting at a table speaking as England captain,” he said. That night on the tiles is not the only such brush with career seppuku along the way, having been thrown off a Lions tour in 2013 for drinking; the unfulfilled