India v England, Third Test
Venue: Rajkot Dates: 15-19 February Time: 04:00 GMT
Coverage: Live text commentary on the BBC Sport website and app, with daily Test Match Special podcasts on BBC Sounds

Ben Stokes is right again. He doesn't get much wrong these days.

The England skipper will win his 100th cap in the third Test against India in Rajkot starting on Thursday. He says it is just a number, and it is, albeit another number in a career of astonishing numbers.

 

This is the man with more Test runs for England than Denis Compton, Michael Vaughan and Jack Hobbs. More wickets than Jim Laker, Sydney Barnes and Angus Fraser.

If his knee allows him to take three more wickets, he will become only the third man to do the double of 6,000 Test runs and 200 wickets. The other two? Jacques Kallis and Sir Garfield Sobers. Mount Rushmore cricketers.

Stokes' 128 sixes in Test cricket already has daylight between him and anyone else to have played the game. By the time he is done, he could have a record that will never be broken.

• Wood back as England pick two seamers for third Test
• Reaching 100 Tests 'just a number', says Stokes

But looking at Stokes through the prism of numbers alone is like saying the Rolling Stones just play musical instruments. There have been better cricketers to play for England, plenty with stronger statistics, others more famous and maybe a handful who were more influential.

There are hardly any who have had the presence of Stokes, with the ability to carry an entire nation on his back, not just as an all-rounder but as a captain too. Red hair, tattoos and puffed-out chest, poking the eye of fear and giving the impression that everything will be OK, no matter the odds.

The signs were there, right at the start, when Stokes came into a once-great England team that were falling apart.

The 2013-14 Ashes tour was an awful episode in the history of English cricket, but it gave birth to the legend of Stokes, who made his debut in the second Test in Adelaide.

 

FULL STORY

 

Ben Stokes for PM!!!