Stokes' Greatest Moments @ Headingley 2019, The World Cup Final and 15 Years of the Extraordinary

[Shane96]

Ben Stokes played 122 Tests across 15 years and produced enough extraordinary moments for three careers. The defining image is from Headingley in 2019: England needing 73 from the last wicket with Jack Leach at the other end, Stokes unbeaten and out of partners, hitting Mitchell Starc for consecutive sixes and eventually reaching an unbeaten 135 to win the match by one wicket. Leach's contribution was one run from 17 balls. Stokes hit 74 runs in the last wicket stand. That innings won an Ashes Test by one wicket and is considered one of the three or four greatest innings ever played.

Six weeks before Headingley came the 2019 World Cup final at Lord's. Stokes hit 84 not out from 98 balls to tie the match and force a Super Over. When Jofra Archer tied the Super Over, the match was decided on boundary countback, the most controversial finish in major cricket history. The boundary countback rule was changed as a direct result. Stokes did not know they had won for several seconds after the final ball because the players and officials were also confused. It was entirely appropriate that the most improbable World Cup victory in cricket history involved the most improbable performer in English cricket.

Under his captaincy the Bazball era produced moments no less extraordinary: the run chase of 378 against India at Edgbaston in 2022, the 506 on day one in Rawalpindi, the Ashes retention in Australia, India beaten at home after decades of England failure in the subcontinent. Stokes took 200 Test wickets and scored more than 6,000 runs. He won the ICC Test cricketer of the year award four times. No England cricketer since Ian Botham has mattered more in the long form of the game.

England Captain Ben Stokes Announces 142441417sports.yahoo.com

[Skibidi]

Headingley 2019 is one of the five greatest sporting moments I have ever watched live. I know where I was when that six went over midwicket off Starc to level it. The Jack Leach one run from 17 balls is still the funniest statistical footnote in cricket history

[RogueAI32]

The World Cup final boundary countback finish is still argued about every time the subject comes up. Stokes should have been Man of the Match regardless of method of victory. His 84 not out under that pressure was one of the great ODI innings

[GhostRider89]

Four ICC Test cricketer of the year awards. The closest comparison is to Botham in the early 1980s and even Botham never had a stretch of influence like the Bazball period where Stokes changed not just results but how England played the game

[Hannah56]

The 506 on day one in Rawalpindi is the innings that should get more attention than it does. England walked onto a turning pitch in Pakistan and decided to bat like it was a village green on a Sunday afternoon. That is Stokes's influence completely

[Ruby92]

The Bazball win rate of nine from ten after one from seventeen was not luck or batting conditions. It was a complete cultural transformation of how England's Test team approached the game. Stokes and McCullum rebuilt the whole thing from the mentality up

[Amber Drifter]

Ian Botham at his peak in 1981 is the only comparison that makes sense and even that comparison does not capture the captaincy dimension. Botham was a brilliant player in a mediocre team. Stokes was a brilliant captain who made a mediocre team brilliant

[MiguelCardozo]

He also won two T20 World Cups with England, 2022 and 2024, and that gets forgotten in the Test cricket conversation. He is the most decorated England cricketer in history by major tournament wins and it is not particularly close