India v England: 'Ben Stokes' journey to 100 Tests one of most compelling in British sport'

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.

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.

The big announcement might have been a century in his second match, when Mitchell Johnson was bowling on a Perth pitch with cracks wide enough to swallow a small child, but a 22-year-old Stokes had already shown his moxie on debut by falling out with Brad Haddin and squaring up to Johnson.

Maybe then, even unbeknown to him, being at ground zero of an implosion helped shape a philosophy on leadership that Stokes is employing 10 years later.

After that Ashes tour there were plenty of times when Stokes could have lost his way. A broken hand from punching a locker was part of the reason why Stokes played only two Tests in the following summer, batting at number eight and somehow not scoring a single run in three innings.

In total, Stokes has missed 28 Tests since he made his debut (as a comparison, Joe Root has missed two since his) for reasons that were, at times, career-threatening.

The Bristol incident of 2017 was played out in the public eye and Stokes was even booed by some sections of the crowd at Trent Bridge after being cleared of affray the following year. A struggle with his mental health caused Stokes to miss the 2021 home summer and was laid bare in a documentary.

Amid and despite the off-field trauma, Stokes was building an anthology of epic performances, finessing an ability to make Test cricket bend to his will. An all-round display to beat Brendon McCullum's New Zealand at Lord's in 2015, the astonishing 258 against South Africa at Cape Town in 2016, last-gasp wickets on the same ground in early 2020 - his own favourite Test - and 176 against West Indies later that year.

The masterpiece will always be the Headingley heroics of 2019, an unbeaten 135 perhaps the greatest innings played by an Englishman to pull off one of the most stunning wins of all time.

Not only did it cement his reputation as English cricket's patron saint of lost causes (don't forget the World Cup final at Lord's), but also spawned tribute knocks - Lord's and Headingley again in last summer's Ashes.

"That is just me, my attitude," Stokes says. "As long as I still have a part to play in the game, I still believe that I can do something to win, regardless of how much the odds are against you."

There were some who thought the captaincy would be too much of a burden, but it turns out that leadership is the most super of all Stokes' strengths. He has gone from Ian Botham to Mike Brearley, with the hope that a knee operation last November will one day allow him to be both rolled into one.

Stokes has shown himself to be one of England's finest tacticians, with a brain that never rests from a desire to drive a match forward. Stokes is a gambler, fearlessly prepared to risk all the chips in pursuit of the big win.

Most importantly, he is a captain whom players want to play for, not just because he has made playing for England as enjoyable as possible, but for the empathy he is able to summon in all situations.

"Cricket is a very skill-based game but there's a lot of emotion that goes into everything," he says. "Understanding emotionally how people can be off the field is a huge part of it."

For the first time, there is the question of what might come next for Stokes. At 32, he is nearer the end of his career than the beginning. At some point he will have to consider what can replace the adrenaline rush of the moments that have made him.

"Since becoming captain one of the main things I enjoy is every day I wake up and have a great opportunity to progress people's careers," he says. "I don't see myself as someone who finishes then goes away from the game.

"If I was to ever go into coaching, the main goal would be to give people the best opportunity to be successful."

Before that, there is a job to finish as England captain and all-rounder. An Ashes series down under will soon appear on the horizon, with Australia pivotal in the Stokes career arc. Debut in 2013-14, exiled in 2017-18, feeling his way back in 2021-22. Perhaps 2025-26 is when Stokes completes his story.

And what a story it has been so far, one of the most compelling in British sport.

Enjoy it while it lasts.