England yesterday were hailing a new Ashes hero for the ages after Ben Stokes dragged his side from almost certain defeat to a narrow victory over Australia with an innings that almost defied belief.
English newspapers carried a picture of the all-rounder celebrating his winning runs at a sun-bathed Headingley on their front pages, with the Sun splashing “Go urn my son!” and the Daily Telegraph “Howzat!”
Ian Botham’s unbeaten 149 at the same ground 38 years ago has long stood as the gold standard of an English Ashes performance, but there were plenty of suggestions that it had been eclipsed.
Photo: Reuters
Former Test opener turned pundit Geoffrey Boycott, never one to readily suggest that the game was better now than it was in his heyday, certainly thought so and described Sunday as the best cricketing moment he had witnessed in half a century.
Botham himself described Stokes as “The Special One” and Michael Atherton, another former England captain, said the unbeaten 135 was “one of the greatest Test innings.”
“It was a combination of all sorts of things: craft, skill, versatility and most of all, an ‘over my dead body’ attitude, without which you are not a great player,” Atherton said.
Photo: AP
Lawrence Booth, the Wisden editor, ranked it in the top five innings in the 137-year history of the Ashes, while former Guardian cricket correspondent and Test player Mike Selvey said that it had reduced him to tears.
Some in the media were not happy restricting themselves to cricket, with Leo McKinstry in the Daily Mail saying the victory highlighted “timeless British virtues, such as stoicism in the face of daunting odds.”
“Britain’s rich sporting heritage has produced many uplifting moments, from the [FIFA] World Cup triumph of 1966 to the glut of gold medals at the 2012 London Olympics, but ranking with them, surely, is the England cricket team’s heart-stopping victory at Leeds yesterday in the third Test against Australia by a single wicket, the narrowest of margins,” McKinstry wrote.
Stokes’ performance was all the more notable for coming only 44 days after his Man of the Match display helped England win the one-day international World Cup for the first time in another extraordinary contest.
Botham is now Sir Ian Botham and there was no shortage of suggestions on social media that Stokes, who arrived in England from New Zealand as a 12-year-old, should be similarly decorated.
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