Sack the vibe: goodbye Bazball and hello England’s search for a cricketing soul

Barney Ronay at Sydney Cricket Ground

In the middle of this Stokes spent the day wedged in at first slip, nursing his newly acquired groin injury, a cricketer who is by this stage basically a hat, a collection of splints nailed together and a grimace. Again, it is no surprise that Stokes should be grimacing, stricken and wincing with agony. As a rule, unless specifically stated otherwise it should be assumed Stokes is always grimacing, stricken and wincing with agony.

Cricket demands a daylong public persona. Stokes has his own version down pat, a kind of performative doom state, a showmanship of pain, like the hero in a western holding his chest and staggering backwards slowly through the saloon doors, but doing it for six hours straight from mid-morning to the afternoon shadows.

Australia will do this to you. The Adelaide Advertiser ran an article midway through the third Test about the “captaincy killer” tradition of an Ashes tour, sniffing out blood, meltdown, collapse.