The focus for Ben Stokes and England at the moment is on one-day cricket, with an imminent trip to Sri Lanka to prepare for the World Cup early next year. However, it is only eight months until the start of the next Ashes series so the Test mauling Australia have received from Pakistan over the past couple of weeks has not escaped the Durham all-rounder’s attention.
“It’s always good to see the old foe getting stuffed,” Stokes agreed with a smile in a break from training at England’s pre-tour camp in Loughborough. “Especially as they completely stuffed us, but I just looked. It didn’t really bother us.”
Stokes nursed an antipathy to Australia from across the Tasman in his early years before moving from Christchurch to Cumbria in his teens when his father, Ged, was appointed to coach the Workington Town rugby league club.
It was freshened up in the furnace of last winter’s Ashes humiliation when although his all-round performances, including that stunning century in Perth, offered rare promise among the wreckage, he admits the experience remained a negative one. “You can’t be happy about anything after a 5-0 loss.”
It seems strange that he has only played in two of the seven Tests since, leaving him with a grim record of five defeats and a lone draw in his six appearances, and meaning at this stage there can be no guarantees he will be selected next summer when England launch their bid for revenge. That makes this another significant winter for Stokes, still only 23 but, he argues, a wiser and more mature cricketer for the range of frustrations he has suffered over the past nine months.
“I now know in myself not to punch lockers,” he joked in reference to the broken hand he suffered when lashing out in frustration following his dismissal in a Twenty20 international in Barbados during March. “But it wasn’t like I lost my mind. It’s just a matter of knowing how to deal with failure, I guess, and [ensuring] any emotion or anger is directed in the right way. As a kid I lost my temper quite easily and tended to look away from the game itself. Now I know how to manage that and get the best out of myself.”
The Barbados incident cost Stokes a place not only in the World T20 that followed in Bangladesh but also in the first two Tests of the summer against Sri Lanka. Then an embarrassing batting run that had started in the Caribbean continued when he was recalled for the first two Tests against India, with – a pair at Lord’s completing four consecutive ducks in international cricket and leaving him with 13 runs in eight innings.
He found solace back at Durham where he now sees himself as “quite a senior player”, helping them to Division One survival in the County Championship and a Lord’s triumph in the Royal London Cup – which followed a swashbuckling unbeaten 33 in England’s last one-day international of the summer, against India at Headingley. So theoretically he goes to Sri Lanka as the man in possession – albeit of a No7 position, lower than he would prefer – but also as one of England’s specialist death bowlers.
“I sort of know my role with the ball but with the bat I’ve been up and down the order quite a few times,” he said, suggesting that the coach, Peter Moores, might now want him to stick at No7. “I had a chat with Mooresy towards the end of the one-day series and having that chat did do me some good about how to play at seven because you can be stuck in two completely different positions. You can lose early wickets and have to build an innings, which I’m more used to, but then you can also be in the situation I was in at Headingley where you go in at the end and try and get as many runs as possible, which I enjoyed. So it’s just being versatile.”
Playing at the World Cup would mean facing up to a couple of Durham team-mates – Calum MacLeod and Paul Collingwood, his county captain who has just confirmed his return to the Scotland coaching set-up – in England’s third group game in his native Christchurch. There is one major logistical issue complicating matters, however, if selected. Clare, his partner, is pregnant with their second child and the due date is 21 February – two days before that match.
“I don’t want to miss that one,” he confirms – referring to the match, not the birth. “We have spoken about it but we don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t want to miss any cricket and she’s totally on board with that. I’m laid back - it sounds pretty heartless to say I’m laid back about the birth of my child but I’m lucky that Clare completely understands my job and the situation. She actually said: ‘If we tell your daughter the reason you weren’t at the birth is you were playing for your country, I reckon she will think that’s quite cool.’”
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