Picking battered Ben Stokes as England ODI captain is reckless act of desperation

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Ben Stokes has put his body through the wringer during his England career - Getty Images/Gareth Copley

So acute is the agitation over Ben Stokes’s fitness that even the sight of him breaking into a light trot at Chester-le-Street this week has acquired state-of-the-nation significance. Might it mean he lasts all five Tests against India this summer? Could England dare to dream of a first away triumph in an Ashes for 15 years? The Test captain’s condition is painfully precarious: he has reached the stage where he is only one misjudged run-up away from a potentially career-ending setback. How absurd, then, that in the midst of this delicate management of his battered body, he is being sized up to carry the extra baggage of leading the country’s sclerotic one-day team.

It is testament to Stokes’s transformative qualities as a motivator that he is even a contender, in his compromised state, for this complex dual role. Still, the idea is staggeringly self-defeating, jeopardising not just his longevity but also England’s prospects in Australia this winter, the ultimate litmus test of the Bazball era. Stokes is patched together with sticky tape as it is, describing himself as the “bionic man” to illustrate how much punishment his left hamstring has taken. In the circumstances, the suggestion that he should shoulder captaincy duties in a second format seems counter-intuitive at best. At worst, it is a reckless act of desperation.

Stokes could hardly have offered a blunter rationale for forsaking the one-day game in 2022. He was feeling broken, he explained, by the remorselessness of the schedule, incapable of producing his maximum effort in 50-over mode any longer. “The England shirt deserves nothing less from anyone who wears it,” he said. The war wounds have only multiplied since, with damage to his knees, toe, hip and hamstring. No sooner did he emerge from self-enforced retirement at the 2023 World Cup that he heard his hip make a popping noise during a warm-up in Guwahati. “I thought I was done,” he reflected. While he escaped any major trauma, the scare reminded him of the dangers of spreading himself too thinly.

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The priority for Stokes should be preserving his body for England’s mammoth Test schedule this year - AP/Andrew Cornaga

So why countenance those risks now? Why, at this pivotal juncture in re-imagining how Test cricket can be played, are England even entertaining the notion of wearing their talisman down with extraneous labour? It is a moot point as to whether Stokes will even make it to Perth in November on his existing workload. Never mind the spirit being willing but the flesh weak, his problem is that his sheer defiance can leave him physically wrecked. Full of snarling intent in New Zealand last December, he aborted a bowling spell in the first Test in Christchurch, alarmed by a twinge in his back. Not that he was prepared, even when his hamstring gave way in Hamilton, to tolerate compromises. Pressed on whether he might need to temper his all-action style for England’s monumental 2025 season, he declared: “I ain’t holding back.”

It is laudable, at one level, that Stokes keeps going to the well even when common sense counsels otherwise. Equally, though, it is not a virtue to be exploited. The England and Wales Cricket Board owes it to him, and to the Test team, to ensure that his inexhaustible masochism does not become a fatal flaw. And they can help by scotching any talk of him being the one-day side’s saviour. This is not 2019 any longer, where Stokes hurls himself all over the Lord’s wicket in pursuit of World Cup glory. Priorities have shifted, both individually and collectively, with Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum throwing everything at trying to make England the most exhilarating Test team in the world.

As that quest reaches its culmination, it feels fruitless, thoughtless even, to be thinking about unnecessary complications. It is not as if England lack a viable alternative to Stokes as ODI captain, given Harry Brook’s likely anointment in the T20 role. Stokes has targeted self-preservation for this defining year, sitting out the Indian Premier League on the pretext that he wants, at 33, to prolong his career as far as possible. On what planet does propelling him back into the one-day sweatshop, where he would be forced to juggle bowling duties with constant fielding adjustments, assist the fulfilment of that aim?

Eoin Morgan, the orchestrator of England’s World Cup triumph, advocates a compromise solution in which Stokes is saved purely for major tournaments. It is not a plan to stir the soul. How, when the main criticism of England’s ODI performances is that their identity appears hopelessly confused, does it serve them to have a captain drifting in and out, unable to impart a consistent message? I incline towards the view of Stuart Broad, who claims that appointing Stokes to this unenviable job would leave him “lost for words”. True, there is a dearth, in the wake of Jos Buttler’s exit, of a captain-in-waiting. But it is not Stokes’s responsibility always to be the firefighter extraordinaire. Having spearheaded a red-ball resurrection, he needs the time and space to see that project through – rather than the distraction of papering over England’s failure to nurture future leaders.

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