From Ted Talks to toy-throwing: The curious insulation of Ben Stokes

The recent confirmation that Rob Key and Brendon McCullum are to continue as the dual custodians of the English men’s side was met in some quarters with the weary resignation one might reserve for a government reshuffle following a botched invasion. In the wake of a 4-1 Ashes drubbing in Australia, a series that began in hope and ended, as most tours have for the past 50 years, in a hollow, sun-scorched apathy, the lack of institutional consequences is startling. In the corporate logic of modern sport, failure usually demands a ritual sacrifice; instead, the ECB has doubled down on Bazball, though we’re being told it will be tempered somewhat. Whatever that means.

Yet, while the barbs are aimed at the facilitators in the pavilion, the man in the centre wicket, Ben Stokes, remains curiously insulated. It is a testament to the Stokesian aura that even as the wreckage of the Australian tour was being cleared, the captain himself was treated as a tragic hero thwarted by the limitations of others.

The irony is that while Key and McCullum are the architects, Stokes is the evangelical promoter. It was Stokes, after all, who stood in the sodden ruins of Old Trafford in 2023 and declared that his team’s reward was not the urn but “what they had become”. It was a sentiment of such profound, secondhand embarrassment that one wondered if the captain had mistaken a Test match for a TED Talk. Had Pat Cummins done this, having allowed his team to drop the opening two tests in a home series, the Barmy Army’s choir would have been composing a chant for his hollow sentiment. But for Stokes, the results, we’re told, aren’t relevant. The true metric is the legacy.

This sense of entitlement was underscored before the first ball was even bowled in Perth. When legends like Ian Botham and Graham Gooch questioned England’s sparse preparation, Stokes dismissed them as has-beens. It was a silly, ill-timed jibe that ignored the collective wisdom of those who had actually won in Australia. To call men like the legendary Botham has-beens while your own side has yet to win a Test on Australian soil since 2011 felt like a rejection of reality.

Contrast this with his counterpart, Pat Cummins. While Stokes was closing ranks and insulting his elders, Cummins was inviting former Australian legends into the dressing room to share in the culture and the spoils of victory after securing the Urn. It was a gesture of secure, inclusive leadership: a captain who understands that he is merely a temporary tenant of the Baggy Green, whereas Stokes acts as if he invented the game’s modern soul.

His petulance has become a recurring motif. In the Indian summer of 2025, his attempt to force an early handshake at Manchester, effectively telling Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar that their personal milestones were an inconvenience to his side, was a ‘toys out of the cot’ moment. When the Indians refused to surrender their quest for centuries, as is their right, Stokes introduced the farcical part-time bowling of Harry Brook and offered sarcastic barbs from mid-off. To the neutral observer, he looked less like a visionary leader and more like a spoilt child who was being asked to finish his dinner.

The tactical failures in Australia were equally pronounced. The rise of Brydon Carse could be looked at as the tour’s silver lining, yet his statistics hide a more damning reality. Carse, with 22 wickets, was technically England’s leading light, but he continually leaked momentum. In Brisbane and Adelaide, his economy rate of just under 5 was the pressure valve through which an unconvincing Australian top order escaped. The decision to hand the new ball to Carse while Stokes, England’s most effective bowler, sat idle at mid-off, felt like a staggering abdication of authority.

Perhaps the most telling moment of the series occurred with the bat. While his teammates followed the all out aggression philosophy blindly into the hands of the Australian slip cordon, Stokes himself underwent a sharp defensive retreat. In Adelaide, he struck his slowest career fifty, a 159-ball crawl. It was a rejection of the very thing he’d spend years promoting, as if the architect had realised the building was structurally unsound and left the tenants dancing on the rooftop.

There is, however, a seductive nobility in the way Stokes handles his players. Following the Noosa escapades, where a viral video of an intoxicated Ben Duckett became fodder for a moralising Australian press, Stokes was unyielding. The irony was rich: an Australian media that glorifies Travis Head for his post-Ashes benders, or David Boon for his fifty-two cans of beer pre-Ashes series, suddenly found its moral compass for an Englishman. Stokes refused to play the headmaster and backed Duckett with fierce, brotherly loyalty. It was exceptional leadership while his team was under fire, protecting a flawed soldier to ensure the unit remained as one.

As an Australian observer, one must admit to a certain lingering trauma. Even if England sat at 20 for 4, the sight of Stokes descending the pavilion steps would still cause the hands to shake. Stokes has traded on these feats of brilliance to buy himself a level of public immunity no other 21st-century English captain has enjoyed. But as the next home summer approaches, the legacy narrative is reaching its expiration date. England will be expected to win against both New Zealand and Pakistan. Stokes has spent his career proving he can do the impossible; how much longer can he keep English fans on the hook?

Written by Tom McCluskey