Over the past two months Ben Stokes has showed that there is more to cricket heroes than just statistics, writes JOHN GOLIATH.
A few years ago, football coach Steve Komphela rehashed Aaron Levenstein’s famous quote while trying to explain a football result:
‘Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.’
I thought about this wonderful quote this week following Ben Stokes’ epic effort with the ball and, especially, with the bat during the third Ashes Test between England and Australia.
After bowling his heart out with little luck in the second innings, Stokes played one of the great Test innings to keep the Ashes alive. His 135 not out won England the match and kept the Ashes alive.
A total of 73 of those runs came after the fall of the ninth wicket, as Stokes tactically outwitted the Aussies alongside No 11 Jack Leach. Of the 63 balls faced during their partnership, Leach only faced 17 for his single, while Stokes faced 46 and hit seven sixes and four boundaries to help get England over the line.
Those are some unbelievable stats.
But it’s not the first time this year that Stokes was England’s knight in shining armour. His 84 in the World Cup final helped England to force a Super Over against New Zealand, before coming out again, visibly knackered, and scoring more runs to help his adopted country to victory.
Stokes’ heroics over the past six weeks have again stirred the debate around who is the greatest all-rounder of all time, with the New Zealand-born player also thrown into the mix alongside greats such as Garfield Sobers, Ian Botham, Shaun Pollock and Jacques Kallis.
It’s the sort of debate where people who have watched those people play have their favourites. But stats are more often than not hauled out to argue points about who really is the greatest.
Stokes’ overall record – in Test cricket – suggests that he doesn’t really belong in that company. A batting average of 35.86 doesn’t come close to Sobers’ remarkable average of 57.78 or Kallis’ 13,289 Test runs at 55.37.
Stokes’ bowling average of 32.22 is on par with Kallis and Sobers, but doesn’t come close to Pollock’s 23.11 or Botham’s 28.40.
At 28 years old Stokes does still have the time to improve on these numbers and he will. But there is more to Stokes than the numbers suggest. Because those numbers conceal things that can’t be quantified by pure numbers alone.
How do you calculate character, temperament, or the will to win? How do you measure a guy’s ability to play such unbelievable knocks on the biggest stage and under immense pressure?
The only way to measure those things is watching a player perform when the chips are down and there’s no one else to help. When that person says to the gods of defeat, ‘Not today’.
Ben Stokes is a ‘not today’ cricketer. A match-winner. A World Cup winner. He maybe doesn’t have the record of some of the greats who have been equally potent with bat and ball, but he’s got that belief and the will to get it done when it really matters.
‘Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.’
Photo: Getty Images
