A few minutes before tea on the first afternoon of an alarmingly one-sided contest, Ben Stokes looked upon his kingdom and the sagging casualties of his reduced arsenal and thought: ‘To hell with it, I’ll do it myself.’
Promise: Brydon Carse offered sporadic threat.
PICTURES: Alamy
It felt at once like a desperate move and the only sensible one. Yet again, in his few overs earlier in the day, he had looked to be England’s best bowler. And again, that fact had thrown up problems.
Most pressingly, for two sessions England’s seamers had come over as rusty, underdone and shot-shy, bedevilled b...
