Goodbye to a true great

All-rounder was fallible but that is what made him such a people’s champion

- Mark Ramprakash

Ben Stokes has been a magnificent player for England, and leaves a legacy of individual brilliance and inspirational leadership.

However you want to judge him, whether it is the quality of his bowling, his batting and his fielding, his sometimes heroic determination, or the character that makes him uniquely able to connect with teammates and with the public, he is among the very best.

The way he became such an important figure in English cricket, and the fact that he is a seam-bowling all-rounder, means he will always be compared with Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff, but unlike them he excelled also at captaincy. He is a man of great empathy, which makes him unusually good with young players, at making them feel comfortable in an environment that can be difficult to enter.

The statistics will tell only part of the story of his international career: his contribution has been so much more than numbers. It is the personality of the man, the way he plays the game, the way he talks about it, and the massive moments of which he has been at the heart.

The summer of 2019 sticks out as the pinnacle of his career. In the World Cup final at Lord’s he showed himself to be such an adaptable player. He is known for his shot play but to bat with such intelligence, to adapt his talent to the occasion and for the team, was brilliant.

That England won that World Cup was hugely down to that effort, on a difficult wicket and with the pressure of chasing.