The Stokes and Woakes Thread

[Bijed]

Stokes is seriously gunning it these days. A healthy competition for all rounders spot in the english side. What;s that saying that doesn't fit in here but needs to be mentioned "different stokes for different woakes"

if England can figure out their middle order they should be in for a good long dominant run i think. Fantastic depth

Agreed, but the middle order thing seems a bit of a big if at the moment. Also, you should have saved the pun for when the Stokes and Foakes comparison thread comes along.

 

[harsh.ag]

Stokes and Woakes 5-fer count - 3.

 

[harsh.ag]

The Stokes and Woakes show is onnnnnn

 

[andruid]

Time to look into this again. Stokes as bating all rounder, Woakes as bowling all rounder work for y'all?

 

[91Jmay]

Stokes is already a better Test player than Flintoff. *hides*

 

[marc71178]

Starting to get that way but needs to carry it on for a while longer for me - don't forget how great Freddie was at his peak.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Stokes is by far the better batsman of the pair. Would say Freddie is still the better bowler overall but I guess at the same time in their careers Stokes is ahead of where Freddie was at the time anyway.

Wasn't it on a tour of India where it suddenly clicked for Freddie and he became good from there? Actually thinking back I think that is where he lost the moobs and started to take things more seriously, bowled ok without the wickets he deserved.

 

[Howe_zat]

Stokes is by far the better batsman of the pair. Would say Freddie is still the better bowler overall but I guess at the same time in their careers Stokes is ahead of where Freddie was at the time anyway.

Wasn't it on a tour of India where it suddenly clicked for Freddie and he became good from there? Actually thinking back I think that is where he lost the moobs and started to take things more seriously, bowled ok without the wickets he deserved.

Given Freddie's test figures in 2002 (21 tests, 19 batting, 47 bowling) I thought if I went back to the early days of CW you'd find a lot of haters, but actually people were actually incredibly patient with him. I think he had already shown what he could do in ODIs by that point and started to develop a reputation for 'making things happen' or the like that Stokes was enjoying when he was in the UAE last year. So he will never really have figures that do justice to him because people could see the value even when there pretty much was none in raw terms.

Ultimately though the reason why Fred was so loved is a cuddly cycle* where he is involved in dramatic Test narratives so much that people started to assign drama to Test narratives that involved Freddie, because the story was better this way, and so the whole phase reinforces how loveable everyman 'not bad for a fat lad' likes a pint lad Freddie is a winner. Take his runout of Ponting in the 2009 Ashes win at the Oval. The game was really over, Australia were 300 away from chasing down a colossal target, but people still loved it because ****, it's Freddie. It's memorable because he was memorable.

Stokes will probably never accomplish this, partly because he hasn't needed to fight through the early part of his career as much in a team with almost no bright spots, partly because he will never have the chance to take down a team like Australia 2005 and partly because he is the gives the impression of being more likely to kick Brett Lee than console him.

*opposite of a vicious cycle

 

[Bijed]

Kudos for trawling back through old CW threads to see what people were saying about Flintoff early in his test career. Also, good points.

 

[mackembhoy]

Time to look into this again. Stokes as bating all rounder, Woakes as bowling all rounder work for y'all?

Stokes was always a batting all rounder. Something Peter Moores and virtually every pundit apart from Botham seemed to not understand.

The fact he was shoved down at 8/9, was embarrassing for us sat watching him belt teams around the park at 4 for Durham. So his bad form that Athers keeps harping on about is a load of crap, expecting someone to have a slog at 8/9 isn't gonna end well.

Great that his averages are getting to, where they would have been had he not been messed around. He bowled well against India but they replaced him with ****ing Jordan cos of his ducks.

He got dropped tons with the ball in those 2 games, also about 6 from Ian bell alone against NZ/Aus. He'd have had a sub 30 average had Ian Bell had sticky hands.

As Stokes number 1 fan for a long time I will fight yas all he's mine

 

[Howe_zat]

Stokes was always a batting all rounder. Something Peter Moores and virtually every pundit apart from Botham seemed to not understand.

The fact he was shoved down at 8/9, was embarrassing for us sat watching him belt teams around the park at 4 for Durham. So his bad form that Athers keeps harping on about is a load of crap, expecting someone to have a slog at 8/9 isn't gonna end well.

Great that his averages are getting to, where they would have been had he not been messed around. He bowled well against India but they replaced him with ****ing Jordan cos of his ducks.

He got dropped tons with the ball in those 2 games, also about 6 from Ian bell alone against NZ/Aus. He'd have had a sub 30 average had Ian Bell had sticky hands.

As Stokes number 1 fan for a long time I will fight yas all he's mine

You're assigning way too much to batting order. Ultimately, batting badly is defined by scoring no runs.

He also wasn't dropped for Jordan who was already in the side for the SL series. He was dropped for Woakes.

 

[MW1304]

Stokes was always a batting all rounder. Something Peter Moores and virtually every pundit apart from Botham seemed to not understand.

The fact he was shoved down at 8/9, was embarrassing for us sat watching him belt teams around the park at 4 for Durham. So his bad form that Athers keeps harping on about is a load of crap, expecting someone to have a slog at 8/9 isn't gonna end well.

Great that his averages are getting to, where they would have been had he not been messed around. He bowled well against India but they replaced him with ****ing Jordan cos of his ducks.

He got dropped tons with the ball in those 2 games, also about 6 from Ian bell alone against NZ/Aus. He'd have had a sub 30 average had Ian Bell had sticky hands.

As Stokes number 1 fan for a long time I will fight yas all he's mine

You seem to be obsessed with Stokes' dropping early in his career, I've seen you mention it a lot, but I'm not sure why you quantify it as being 'messed around'. The truth is he was batting appallingly at the time. Almost literally could not buy a run. Since he was being picked as the fourth seamer and they were still having teething problems with the batting order, it was perfectly reasonable to drop him. He certainly wasn't deserving of the no. 6 position that he's now made his own.

It isn't like he was just slogging down at 8, he was getting out before he'd even got set. Who's to say his immense success since his recall wasn't actually helped by the experience, rather than it messing with him as you claim?

Plus, as Howe's said, he wasn't even dropped for Jordan. And Jordan bowled pretty well against an admittedly shot Indian line up.

 

[Bijed]

Am I right in thinking that when Stokes was dropped he hadn't reached double figures in his last 10 international innings or something ridiculous like that?

Edit: It would appear that I managed to understate how dire Stokes' form had been:

Sharma to Stokes, OUT, Stokes' miserable run continues, duck again! Ishant has five, again the short ball has done it, this was well outside off Stokes goes for the pull, hits low on the blade and swirls high towards midwicket, safely taken by Pujara, India tighten their grip on this one, Stokes' recent scores for England: 0,5,5,4,0,4,0,0,0,0

18 runs in his last 10 innings for England

 

[ImpatientLime]

imagine how good fred would have been had he pitched the ****er up more often.

 

[GIMH]

Freddie is the greatest cricketer ever so the fact these comparisons are being made means three things:

1. Stokes is pretty good
2. Jono is a ****
3. Taxation is theft

 

[Prince EWS]

Freddie is the greatest cricketer ever so the fact these comparisons are being made means three things:

1. Stokes is pretty good
2. Jono is a ****
3. Taxation is theft

Sigged.

 

[Scaly piscine]

Am I right in thinking that when Stokes was dropped he hadn't reached double figures in his last 10 international innings or something ridiculous like that?

Edit: It would appear that I managed to understate how dire Stokes' form had been:



18 runs in his last 10 innings for England

The thing is he was England's best or second best seamer at the time. So he was absolutely worth his place despite the batting not firing.

 

[Bijed]

The thing is he was England's best or second best seamer at the time. So he was absolutely worth his place despite the batting not firing.

Oh, I don't disagree (though I can only go on stats - which appear decent - as I didn't follow the series), but his batting was being discussed and I found how few runs he was scoring at the time to be perversely impressive.

 

[MW1304]

The thing is he was England's best or second best seamer at the time. So he was absolutely worth his place despite the batting not firing.

What? In a team with Anderson and Broad, he somehow managed to be better than one or both of them.

 

[randycricfreak]

Easy peasy

7.Stokes
8.Woakes
9.Ali
10.Broad
11.Jimmy