Ben Stokes (2020) – On Fire: My Story of England’s Summer to Remember: Headline, London

Note: When I first started planning Young Lions Sometimes Roar, Ben Stokes had just been appointed England captain; when I was getting ready to release, he announced his retirement.

At various points I was updating little sections here and there to reflect the current mood surrounding his captaincy reign, before it just seemed best to take it all out.

But if you’ve read the book – and thank you so much if you have – then you’ll hopefully understand the inclusion of this little word on Stokes.

In the 90s, the possibility of England unearthing their next great all-rounder after Ian Botham often seemed as distant as the prospect of ever beating Australia again. Although the man who would ultimately fill that void and achieve that goal – Andrew Flintoff – did make his Test debut at the end of the decade, the brief glimpses of a raw 20-year-old during the 1998 home series against South Africa did little to stir any anticipation of future heroics.

Even while Flintoff showed moments of promise while lurking on the fringes of the England setup in the early 00s – his ‘not bad for a fat lad’ phase – my loyalties lay instead with Yorkshire’s Craig White, a long-time personal favourite and an underrated bowler (although possibly not a Test number seven with the bat).

And though the team under Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher eventually started to achieve success, with some memorable moments – the tail-end pair of Dominic Cork and Darren Gough, New Bothams no more, securing a tense home win over the West Indies, that late victory secured in the Karachi gloom – the search for the next superstar of English cricket apparently remained ongoing.

What would it be like to have our own Botham, leading us to victory over the Aussies? 2005 was when those England fans who discovered the game in the 90s would finally experience that feeling for the first time. Flintoff was, for a brief but sustained period, a genuinely world-class all-rounder, and against the toughest opposition – featuring so many 90s bogeymen – he was able to deliver when it mattered most. Finally we had our own moments of inspiration to remember, cherish, and bore the next generation with.

And then, just like that, it was all gone. Burdened by the captaincy like Botham before him, Flintoff managed just 12 more Tests after the 5-0 hammering brought everyone back down to earth in 2006/7. Did Flintoff really smash Shane Warne everywhere, or have Adam Gilchrist on toast? Was that victory in 2005 ever real in the first place? Like the team, we enjoyed the party, but then came the hangover: fuzzy memories of a drunken mess, filed away in a cupboard along with our ‘Greatest Series Ever’ DVD box sets.(1)

The nation’s obsession with heroic all-rounders was finally moderated by the achievements of the Strauss/Flower regime without one. A young Ben Stokes rather slipped under the radar, earning a call-up for the doomed 2013/4 Ashes tour after Chris Woakes failed to convince during his audition at The Oval in the final Test of the previous series.

Stokes’ hundred at Perth was the only whimper of defiance mustered by the team on that tour, and despite a few early hiccups and uncertainties over his role, (2) he became a fixture in the side relatively quickly without riding the same rollercoaster of hype and disappointment his predecessor, and those before him, had endured.

By 2019, Stokes’ playing reputation was established, but arguably he was still without a defining contribution on the pitch, other than an unhappy one delivering the final over of the 2016 T20 World Cup to a rampant Carlos Brathwaite.

At the end of the summer, that and other recent ghosts had been banished, with Stokes leading from the front as England repeatedly threatened to fumble their bid to win the 50-over World Cup despite home advantage and one of their best ever one-day teams. Winning back the Ashes was a bridge too far, even for Stokes, but he still gave us Headingley. This was that defining moment: one man bending events to his will, standing up when the rest of the team threatened to wilt.

In theory, On Fire – the accompanying book telling the tale of the 2019 summer – is an appealing prospect. However, the reality is a fairly humdrum recapping of each match, supported by details of preparation and training – of the team and Stokes as an individual – and the contributions of support staff.

It is also, like so many other mid-career books, rather short on controversy and candour. There is little need to risk upsetting anyone when publishers know that cricket fans, or desperate relatives of cricket fans with a birthday or Christmas approaching, will buy them anyway. While On Fire’s cover is adorned with positive quotes from retired players, they say things like ‘Ben Stokes is really good at cricket!’ rather than offer up any thoughts on the text within.

The spiciest comments are reserved for Australia’s David Warner, although the revelation that Warner might not have endeared himself to opponents with his on-field conduct is hardly that surprising. Stokes also offers support for the decision to omit Alex Hales – after failing two tests for recreational drugs – from the World Cup squad, although declines to offer anything further on their personal relationship.(3)

Although probably not, as Stokes puts it, ‘the level of player that we could make an exception for’, England arguably did miss Hales, as replacement James Vince struggled to make an impact, although winning the tournament rather renders such discussions moot. Meanwhile, coach Trevor Bayliss remains, as per his reputation, a background figure, most memorably sitting the team down during post semi-final celebrations to address the English tendency to ‘think they’ve already won the damn thing’ at that stage.

Any big revelations are likely to be saved for Stokes’ eventual, and likely imminent, autobiography, and since 2019 there has certainly been plenty of other material to mine. His spell as captain was nothing if not eventful, but time will likely judge him more kindly than most contemporary appraisals.(4) He led the team to memorable victories while maintaining his own fitness and playing contribution, and was perhaps unfortunate that the momentum generated by his whirlwind start as skipper did not carry the team through to victory in the 2023 Ashes.

The return leg ended unhappily, as it so often has in recent memory, with calls for sackings and changes. Does Stokes even get into the team anymore, wondered online opinion-havers. With the captain suspended after the first Test of the summer, filler pieces about possible alternative all-rounders in the county game were eagerly penned. Who could replace him? No-one, as it turns out.

Stokes soon fell on his sword, and received an ungenerous goodbye: ‘That announcement was a disgrace. Will you come back for the 2027 Ashes, though?’ Somehow one of England’s greatest ever players ended the season, fully fit and firing, turning out for Durham in the second division of the County Championship.

For all that English cricket craves its heroes, it also tends to treat them shabbily. Give the public enough great deeds, and they come to expect more. A final return would certainly be a good story, especially if England won back the Ashes.

And perhaps Stokes was just tired and needed a break. As Rob Key noted in the aftermath of his retirement, ‘anything is possible with Ben’, but there was a finality in Stokes’ announcement – that reference to ‘many trips to the well… for this team’ – which suggested that he really is done.

Stokes’ descent from the summit of 2019 was steady, and shallow: there were more great performances – his furious, and ultimately futile, 155 against Australia at Lord’s in 2023 was another stirring innings – and whispers about injury causing a permanent decline in his bowling proved to be misguided.

But for those of us who witnessed the many twists and turns of his Headingley innings, sealed with a mighty crack of a Pat Cummins short ball to the boundary, there was an acceptance that it was a performance that could never be matched or repeated, not even by the man himself. How do you top that?

--

Young Lions Sometimes Roar: Watching Bad Cricket (And Playing Cricket Badly) in the 90s by Ben Richards is out now.

Click here for more info or here to buy a copy.

Notes:

(1) I was in my early-20s era of ‘house parties with lots of bottles and cans and not a lot of food’ at the time. The tension and subsequent excitement generated by the victory at Trent Bridge during one such event led to a level of overindulgence that meant my only real memory of the post-match revelries was hearing departing guests enquiring as to my whereabouts while I lay face down on the floor somewhere near my bed.

(2) The following summer, Stokes was selected as a bowling all-rounder, batting at number eight for two Tests against India, and failing to score any runs in any of his three innings.

(3) Hales was the other player present during the incident outside a Bristol nightclub in 2017 which led to Stokes being charged with, and found not guilty of, affray. Stokes later referred to Hales as his ‘friend… at the time’ in his Amazon Prime documentary, Phoenix from the Ashes, and the deterioration of their relationship was somewhat awkwardly acknowledged when the two became England team-mates again during the 2022 T20 World Cup.

(4) Amidst all the post-retirement harrumphing, it was left to Vic Marks in The Guardian to deliver a more effusive and fair-minded eulogy.

More Profiles

© Ben Richards 2026

Young Lions Sometimes Roar