In a match stuffed with milestones, we waited, but not, as it turns out, for Jimmy. Not for a 700th Test wicket, but a 198th. And not from a freakish bottle-blond 41-year-old, but a freakish ginger 32-year-old, back, at last, with the ball in his hand.
On another tricky day for England, as a 3-1 series defeat drifted out of sight and 4-1 slotted into the sightlines, and just as India’s first innings looked about to launch into the stratosphere, Ben Stokes suddenly picked up the ball in time for the second over after lunch.
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It had been so long that you had almost forgotten he could do it, pounding the pistons into the ground, though those following in India had seen him practising on the outfield as the tour went on, and with increasing vigour.
He threw down a practice delivery or two, shuffled the field this way and that, and pummelled up to the crease in typical manner, looking in outrageously good nick. It was his first ball in 251 days, since the Ashes Test at Lord’s in July, before a disappointing World Cup and November’s knee surgery – the removal of a bone spur and the stitched reinforcement of the meniscus. He had promised the doctors he wouldn’t bowl on this tour. He broke his promise – too late to save the series, but in time to raise the spirits.
What a way to do it, a first ball that jagged just enough off a good length to clip the top of Rohit Sharma’s off-stump. The batter, on 103, glanced behind, bemused, and allowed himself a little smile before trudging away, kicking his foot in frustration as he passed over the boundary rope. On the balcony, Brendon McCullum put his hands over his mouth and glanced at Paul Collingwood. On the field, Zak Crawley put his hand over his mouth and patted Stokes, who, mostly, stalked away.
It was all very reminiscent of another England all-rounder who performed a similar feat in 1986 after a period away from bowling, albeit because he was serving a 63-day ban for smoking cannabis. In the last Test of that summer, Ian Botham was handed the ball first change and, all peroxide mullet and tight trousers, cantered through his straight run-up. He delivered a shortish, nothingish kind of ball, which New Zealand’s Bruce Edgar slotted straight to second slip where Graham Gooch was waiting. “Who,” asked Gooch, “writes your scripts?”
Botham went on to break Dennis Lillee’s world record of 355 Test wickets an over later, though weather ensured the game was a draw. Stokes’s scriptwriter may yet have more up his sleeve, but on this day followed up only with a brief period of England dominance. Anderson took wicket No 699 in the next over, eventually getting the better of Shubman Gill, who’d had the temerity to tonk him back over his head for six.
With both the morning session centurions gone, Stokes and Anderson had the debutant Devdutt Padikkal and ingenu Sarfaraz Khan on the ropes for half an hour. But the young Indians stuck to their task and once again the runs started to flow. Stokes then spilled coffee over his own lines by dropping a caught and bowled – albeit off a no-ball – and leaning across Joe Root only to shell what would have been Shoaib Bashir’s fifth wicket on the Dharamsala grass.
In the TNT studio, the ever-affable Steven Finn, veteran of three knee surgeries, was watching Stokes. “I found it difficult to come back and be exactly the same bowler after knee surgery. But Ben Stokes has that zip. If you look at the slow-mo, there is no give in that front knee and that’s what you look for.”
As India’s lead passed 250, England’s chances of picking up anything from this game other than a day off trekking in the Himalayas, seem unlikely.
But Stokes’s return with the ball automatically makes them a better side. He is also the kind of player who is better when he’s busy, a happier batter when he’s bowling; a better captain when he’s happy.
As a specialist batter in India, he hasn’t thrived. He does, though, have one innings left.
As for Anderson, there are still two wickets left in India’s innings for him to grasp the milestone marker. Unless, of course, he fancies West Indies at Lord’s, in the second week of July.
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