{"id":663509,"date":"2026-06-29T00:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T00:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/663509\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T00:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T00:18:15","slug":"three-flavours-of-vacuum-created-by-ben-stokes-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/663509\/","title":{"rendered":"Three flavours of vacuum created by Ben Stokes\u2019 retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t 3 minute read<\/p>\n

Voids get filled. The England Test team therefore has an awful lot of new stuff on the way later this summer \u2013 chiefly in these three main areas.<\/p>\n

Captaincy\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Ben Stokes isn\u2019t England captain then the two most obvious replacements are Joe \u201cCraptain\u201d Root and Harry \u201cDingbatter\u201d Brook. <\/p>\n

Clearly we\u2019d all greatly prefer it if Root was permitted to keep his whole focus on batting<\/a>. Similarly, Harry Brook\u2019s peak performance seems to hinge on batting like a complete dingbat<\/a>. We can\u2019t tell you how much we worry that the responsibility of captaincy might dampen his enthusiasm for playing that way. Actually, that\u2019s not true \u2013 we can. We wrote 1,500 words on exactly that topic<\/a> and reference the article regularly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Furthermore, whoever takes over, are they honestly likely to wheel out mad captaincy gambits like asking an attack entirely devoid of fast bowlers to deliver 98% short balls for 51 overs in a row? (That is an actual thing that Ben Stokes actually did<\/a>, not some wild rhetoric.)<\/p>\n

All-roundering<\/p>\n

England are going to stop picking spinners while saying \u201cbalance the side\u201d a lot, aren\u2019t they? We can be pretty damn sure of this because they did it last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While he can\u2019t actually seem to make any runs at the moment, Stokes does still carry the reputation of being a batter as well as a bowler. This means that whenever he\u2019s been available, England haven\u2019t immediately felt obliged to dick about sacrificing whole aspects of the game (spin bowling) in the name of \u2018balance\u2019. <\/p>\n

Sometimes they\u2019ve gone down that grim road anyway. Just imagine how often it\u2019ll happen without a cricketer they can pass off as both a proper batter and a proper quick bowler.<\/p>\n

Nonsense<\/p>\n

Most strikingly of all, it\u2019s hard to imagine that the on- and off-field nonsense voids created by the absence of Stokes can possibly be filled any time soon.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t even need to think back too far to appreciate the alacrity with which he ticks both boxes. Stokes is basically retiring because he stayed out past his bedtime<\/a> and when that decision was made public ahead of the 11th over of a bowling spell, he took a wicket with his very next ball. That would be top level on- and off-field nonsense for most players, but in his case it\u2019s just a couple of things he\u2019s done this week.<\/p>\n

Extend the timeframe to months and years and Stokes\u2019 historic nonsense mushrooms to frankly unmanageable levels.<\/p>\n

Ben Stokes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"3 minute read Voids get filled. The England Test team therefore has an awful lot of new stuff…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1723,1721,309,4204,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-663509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-ben-stokes","tag-cricket","tag-england","tag-retirement","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}