Morgan’s greatest legacy may be how Stokes is reshaping Test team in his image

There is one aspect of the Test captaincy Ben Stokes hasn’t warmed to in these past few weeks, and that is answering everybody else’s questions about how he does it. “Have you been wondering what all the fuss is about captaincy in Test cricket?” Stokes was asked on Tuesday. “I mean it’s quite annoying having to do this when I’d rather be in the dressing room celebrating with the other lads,” Stokes laughed, only half-joking. Clarity. Positivity. Simplicity. There’s only so many ways he can explain it before you start to think that, as Louis Armstrong said, if you’ve got to ask then you’re never going to know.

There was one question he welcomed, though. And it was his next one, from an Indian journalist who wanted to know if Stokes thought the way England were playing might change how other teams do too. “I’ve been waiting for that for five weeks,” he said. “That’s what we want to do, we want to create a legacy in Test cricket, we’ve done it in white-ball cricket and we’ve seen other teams follow in our footsteps.” He went on to explain how much he had “loved” the century Rishabh Pant scored in the first innings. “The more we see players like that succeed, the more the negativity around that type of play will die out.”

Stokes has never once mentioned what he learned from playing under Alastair Cook and Joe Root, men who you might find pictured in the MCC manual about English Test captaincy. Instead he talks about modelling himself on the former white-ball captain Eoin Morgan. He did it again on Tuesday: “I’ve taken a lot of his messaging and how he wanted the team in one-day cricket to go forward and I’ve brought that mentality and ethos into this Test environment.”

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