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Ben Stokes


Jack Torrance said:
Hope he recovers. Disaster for England mind, think India will hammer us now
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Yep, to say he is our talisman would be an understatement. He's obviously not mentally fit and it may not have made much difference, given that, but he'll be a massive loss.
 
I wish Stokes all the best, its his life and he can do what he wants and the best interests of him and his family

I must admit I feel a lot for Joe Root, no doubt he will be behind Stokes 100% as they are best pals, but England were absolutely flying, winning series after series, 6 away tests in a row then suddenly all his best players start coming in and out of the team

Its just too much dispruption, and again we go into a big series without our best side and our best player.

Not much can do about it but I do feel for Root as he will be the one who gets hammered on here, on twitter etc if we lose badly against India.

I dont think we will mind.
 
Hope he rests and feels well enough in the future to return. He's an amazing talent. My young always asks to watch Stokes' catch on the boundary from a couple of years ago.
 
The Rat said:
I wish Stokes all the best, its his life and he can do what he wants and the best interests of him and his family

I must admit I feel a lot for Joe Root, no doubt he will be behind Stokes 100% as they are best pals, but England were absolutely flying, winning series after series, 6 away tests in a row then suddenly all his best players start coming in and out of the team

Its just too much dispruption, and again we go into a big series without our best side and our best player.

Not much can do about it but I do feel for Root as he will be the one who gets hammered on here, on twitter etc if we lose badly against India.

I dont think we will mind.
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Stokes will clearly be a big miss to the balance of the side but I still think success will depend upon whether we can get a top 3 that will perform at least reasonably well.
 
rentaghost said:
Stokes will clearly be a big miss to the balance of the side but I still think success will depend upon whether we can get a top 3 that will perform at least reasonably well.
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bur will need even more from them now as I suspect Buttler will go to 6

he lifts the whole team

you just can’t quantify the impact he has
 
The Rat said:
bur will need even more from them now as I suspect Buttler will go to 6

he lifts the whole team

you just can’t quantify the impact he has
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I’m going on Wed for the first day. Looking forward to it but not as optimistic as you are. I think they have the edge and will do OK in our conditions. Time will tell.
 
rentaghost said:
I’m going on Wed for the first day. Looking forward to it but not as optimistic as you are. I think they have the edge and will do OK in our conditions. Time will tell.
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they probs do have edge n stokes n Woakes huge losses

I just don’t think they are as big favs as they say

their batting line up struggled in India and will find the moving ball tough as ususal, lot of hard hands
 
Kent_Mackem said:
Hope he rests and feels well enough in the future to return. He's an amazing talent. My young always asks to watch Stokes' catch on the boundary from a couple of years ago.
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Agree. He's so important to this England Team and we are far weaker without him. We have very little chance of competing in Australia, but without him we're looking at another 4 or 5-0
 
I think it’s remarkable how the Indian lads go on

none of them pull out really and none of them get rested

they’re just on the road constantly

this isn’t a dig at England lads more of a query

reckon they are just wired differently or is the culture different that they darent pull out or speak up?

also different point England got far far too much stick for their NZ loss

stokes issues highlights it

NZ hardly play any cricket they are always fresh and mentally ready to go

if they’d have played as much cricket as we had in a bubble it would not have been the same result

Oz too have not played 1 test away from home since covid
 
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The Rat said:
I think it’s remarkable how the Indian lads go on

none of them pull out really and none of them get rested

they’re just on the road constantly

reckon they are just wired differently or is the culture different that they darent pull out or speak up?
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I think it is a different culture. You see it a lot in software development. Many of the teams have testing services offshore over in India. It's cheaper but I don't think it often works and is false economy. There are issues with timezones, accents and there is a often cultural difference that I have seen where Indian software testers will not admit when they do not understand something. This leads to massive problems and wasted time further down the timeline chart.
 
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The Rat said:
I think it’s remarkable how the Indian lads go on

none of them pull out really and none of them get rested

they’re just on the road constantly

this isn’t a dig at England lads more of a query

reckon they are just wired differently or is the culture different that they darent pull out or speak up?

also different point England got far far too much stick for their NZ loss

stokes issues highlights it

NZ hardly play any cricket they are always fresh and mentally ready to go

if they’d have played as much cricket as we had in a bubble it would not have been the same result

Oz too have not played 1 test away from home since covid
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Test Team are cash cows and they've been getting milked more year on year

Theres also a profoundly weird ambiguity in the English sporting psyche, in all sports

England veer from being "we can beat anyone" to "we should be able to beat anyone" to "were the underdogs today" and back again multiple times in every single tournament. Just a total rubbery mentality, all over the place.

It's no coincidence to me that the 3 most successful teams of any English sport in the past two decades have come from teams who notably targeted their mental game and focussed on consistency there as well- Woodwards Rugby, Flower's Cricket, Southgate Football.

There has been more than enough talent in all those sports outside of those teams for each to do better than they did, but all have notably not just failed to live up to that how, but underperformed to a catastrophic, disintegrating level, and I'm positive it was because their heads were all over the place, as evidenced by them giving a constantly different assessment of how good or bad they were every other day. They didnt believe in themselves.
 
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