Will Stokes trust his tiring attack in series decider?

Even the conversation, Ben Stokes said, was “ridiculous”.

- RICHARD JOLLY

Injury substitutes, he argued, should not be a part of cricket. About 20 minutes earlier, the India coach Gautam Gambhir had provided the opposite answer. “Imagine if you have to play with 10 men against 11, how unfortunate that would be?” he said after Rishabh Pant broke his foot. “You stick me in an MRI scan and you’d get someone else in right away,” countered Stokes, with his ample experience of playing through the pain barrier.

Pant will not play when these sides, after the briefest of pauses, reconvene at The Oval on Thursday. Stokes, following the furore surrounding his offer to shake hands before Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja reached centuries, is left pondering a different kind of substitutes, whether due to injury or fear of it, ineffectiveness or exhaustion, but at the start, not mid-match.

England responded to the draw at Old Trafford by adding paceman Jamie Overton to the squad, just as Stokes had said that they would veer from their usual policy of naming the team two days early. In different ways, there are reasons to wonder if any of their fast bowlers can fulfil the same role in the fifth Test.

Stokes will play, almost regardless of medical advice. He didn’t bowl on Saturday, was troubled by his bicep on Sunday and yet still produced the day’s most menacing spell. Jasprit Bumrah is the world’s top-ranked bowler, but Stokes is the series’ leading wicket-taker. Given the astonishing exploits and longevity of James Anderson and Stuart Broad, the threat Jofra Archer and Mark Wood posed at their best and Chris Woakes’ record at home, it is a moot point if Stokes has ever been definitively England's best bowler. Now, at 34 and 115 Tests into his career, he is.