MUMBAI: Like his all-out efforts in the field, talismanic England cricketer and Test captain Ben Stokes is honest about his take on the game too. Ahead of a five-Test series against India, with both sides experiencing transition, the renaissance man of English cricket in the redball format post-2022 is looking ahead to a competitive series, beginning at Leeds from June 20.A contrarian at the best of times, Stokes not surprisingly differed with views that suggest India will be easy meat without seasoned batting stalwarts, the now-retired Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, as he chatted with select Indian media ahead of the series. “Experience is overplayed and overthought,” Stokes reckons and feels the depth in Indian cricket will always make them a competitive side.Being a fierce competitor himself, though, Stokes is likely to miss the jousts that he had with Kohli, someone he dismissed six times in Tests and with whom he had entertaining verbal duels.“What Virat brought to the game and what he brought to that Indian team apart from his performance, was energy and theatre. He was such an animated character because he cared about doing well for India,” feels Stokes. In the same breath, though, he says Kohli’s absence won’t rob the series of its competitive spirit.The 34-year-old with 6728 runs and 213 scalps in a stellar 111-Test career is often looked upon as a miracle man the world over for his extraordinary feats in big moments. He took over an England Test team that was in the ICU in red-ball cricket in 2022. But since he combined with coach Brendon McCullum, their ‘attack, entertain, and win’ approach has reinvigorated interest levels in Test cricket among fans. The style has been criticised too, particularly in India last year, when they threw away a 1-0 advantage to lose 4-1 when they chose to be more cavalier than calm.But the record of 20 wins in 33 matches with 12 losses and just one draw tells you about the result-oriented approach England have adopted under Stokes. However, his captaincy era, many feel, will be defined by what happens in the series vs India and the Ashes Down Under this year. Considering how much Ashes success means in England, is there a danger of the hosts having one eye on the trip Down Under even while facing India? “Absolutely not. I don’t need to go into too much detail around answering that because that’s a very speculative thing to say,” Stokes says with a dismissive laugh.Stokes also is not comfortable calling his time as England captain an ‘era’. But he harbours big ambitions. “I know where I want to push this team. We have gone well, but we want to aim for the top. All I want to do is give my heart and soul to English cricket and win as many games as possible.”Stokes, one of the most marketable cricketers of the modern era, could be a big-ticket player in franchise cricket in terms of what teams are willing to pay for a cricketer as skilled as he is. But considering his injury-prone body, he wants to commit to Test cricket for now. He speaks about the format with a sense of romance. “What I love about Test cricket is the fact that it lasts five days. You can have a bad day, turn up the next day, and then you can right all the wrongs you feel that you’ve done from the previous day.”While he may love the nuances of the game’s most sacred format, he has issues with the way the World Test Championship (WTC) is structured and questions the need for it. “There was nothing wrong with Test cricket before,” reckons Stokes and feels Test cricket came under scrutiny and fears Exclusive of the format dying were expressed only because of media speculation. “You ask all the players which is the best format, and they will say, Test cricket. And now we’ve got the WTC. That’s what it is all about now. There was nothing wrong with Test cricket before WTC started,” Stokes stated.But why is Stokes not a fan of the WTC? “Because every series is massive. Whether it’s a three-match series, a two-match series, a fivematch series, they mean the exact same now as what they meant 20 years ago. You want to win it. We never needed a WTC to put more onus on Test cricket, because I’ve always put Test cricket at the top. And I’m sure if you ask everyone else who loves Test cricket, they’ll say the same,” he says and without fearing the risk of being unpopular, he adds, “People just want to say the right things about WTC because it has become big now.”Ask him how he feels when people label him as the last of the great seam-bowling all-rounders and Stokes jokes, “The only thing that I would consider myself great at is eating a lot of food.” Stokes’ trimmeddown version, though, post his hamstring surgery and the long spells he’s been bowling to qualify as the fourth seamer, defies those words.(Watch India tour of England from 3:30 PM, June 20th onwards LIVE On Sony Sports Ten 1 & Sony Sports Ten 5 channels)
