Yeah that home India series is the only time I can recall that he's consistently influenced matches across a series. He's played some useful and important knocks since then, but in all honesty his overall output has been (imo) disappointing given that he's selected largely for his batting and I think Howe_zat summed up his bowling pretty well when he was doing commentary over the summer - Curran had figures of 2/45 or something along those lines and Howe said most England fans are probably pretty pleased with that - he just doesn't bowl *that* much and take that many wickets and for this reason although his home bowling average (23.56) looks great, it flatters his bowling's actual impact a bit. It's not the worst thing ever as Stokes' existence kinda makes up for the lower amount of bowling he does. I know you could argue that he'd take more wickets if he was given more overs to bowl and this is obviously true, but imo there's a reason he isn't given more overs and I think his average would blow out a bit if he was.
The other issue, although rotation policies might change this a bit, is that he's probably ususally going to be competing for a spot with Chris Woakes. The two of them are similar in that they have good home records but are questionable picks overseas and Woakes is just straight up better imo - a bit less x-factor with the bat, I guess, but I'd consider him more reliable and he's just a more valuable bowler. I know we've done Woakes at 7, Curran at 8 before but that's not something I like to see unless we have a wicketkeeper who is a test-standard #6. Bairstow and Buttler have both had phases where they were, but I think expecting either of them to do that long-term would be unrealistic. I guess we don't know about Foakes yet in this regard, but really it should only be a question when Stokes isn't available/can't bowl.
Anyway, that went on a bit haha but oh well
