Naturally, there are numbers.
More Test runs than Graham Thorpe and Denis Compton, more caps than David Gower and Geoffrey Boycott.
More wickets than Darren Gough and Steve Harmison, at a better strike-rate than James Anderson and Ian Botham.
More Tests as captain than Mike Brearley and Raymond Illingworth. More Test sixes than any other man on the planet.
But Ben Stokes is a cricketer of more than mere numbers, even if his final Test tallies of 7,273 runs and 252 wickets leave him in the same statistical bracket as Sir Garfield Sobers and Jacques Kallis, bona fide legends.
More Test runs than Graham Thorpe and Denis Compton, more caps than David Gower and Geoffrey Boycott.
More wickets than Darren Gough and Steve Harmison, at a better strike-rate than James Anderson and Ian Botham.
More Tests as captain than Mike Brearley and Raymond Illingworth. More Test sixes than any other man on the planet.
But Ben Stokes is a cricketer of more than mere numbers, even if his final Test tallies of 7,273 runs and 252 wickets leave him in the same statistical bracket as Sir Garfield Sobers and Jacques Kallis, bona fide legends.
2 months ago
