Over the years, England’s Ben Stokes has established himself as a potent finisher across formats, and has especially grown in stature in the Test format, leading the side under head coach Brendon McCullum.
Stokes’ exceptional knock of 155 in the second Ashes Test at Lord’s drew praise from many quarters, and former Australia captain Ricky Ponting had an interesting observation. Ponting compared Stokes’ finishing abilities in Tests to that of MS Dhoni in T20Is, adding that there were not much cricketers who could finish the game the way Stokes and Dhoni did.
“I think any international player is under pressure anytime they walk out to play, but Ben batting in the middle order or later order like he does, probably finds himself in more match-winning opportunity situations than some others might,” Ponting told on the latest episode of the ICC review.
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“The first one that comes to mind is maybe someone like a Dhoni, who’s there at the end in a lot of T20 games, and finishing games, whereas Ben’s doing it at the end of Test matches, and there’s not, probably not many, many players through the history of the game that have found themselves in that sort of role and are there at the end winning games, and especially as a captain,” he added.
Stokes’ efforts at Lord’s however went in vain, after being dismissed in the 73rd over of the chase, leaving England at 301/7. England were set a target of 371 runs by Australia, and were eventually bowled out for 327.
Ponting feared that Stokes would take England home, like he did at Leeds with an unbeaten 135 in 2019, when England chased down 359 with one wicket to spare.
“I thought and everyone probably thought he could do it again because we’ve seen it happen before, but this was probably, slightly more runs that they were chasing (in 2019),” added the 48-year-old.
“In the back of the back of everyone’s minds, I think once it started playing out the way that it was and how many similarities there were to Headingley in 2019…Steve Smith dropped him…and he was dropped on 116 by Marcus Harris at Headingley, So those sort of ghosts of the past kept coming back out,” Ponting reminisced.
Ben Stokes averages 36.36 while batting in Tests, while his bowling average in the longest format reads 32.07. However, Ponting feels the numbers don’t do justice to Stokes, and instead, it’s the performance on the field that matters.
“We have all over the years really only sort of judged cricketers on their numbers and their stats of what their average is and how many wickets they take,” observed Ponting.
“If you looked at Ben Stokes in that light only, it doesn’t do him full credit to the player that he is as he averages 35 (36) with the bat and 32 with the ball.
“So those numbers alone don’t sort of put him in the highest echelon of players. But when you see him play like he did (at Lord’s) and do some of the things he’s done for this team over a long period of time, then we have to find ways to start measuring cricketers in a better way of how they impact games, how many games they actually can win themselves because he’s an out and out match-winner, that’s for sure,” commented the Tasmania-born former cricketer.
Australia lead the five-match Ashes series 2-0, with victories at Edgbaston and Lord’s. The third Test will kickstart at Headingley from Thursday (6 July).
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