Ben Stokes, the guy in the middle wicket, is oddly shielded from the criticism directed at the facilitators in the pavilion. The fact that the skipper was viewed as a sad hero thwarted by the constraints of others while the wreckage of the Australian tour was being removed is evidence of the Stokesian aura.

In some quarters, the recent announcement that Rob Key and Brendon McCullum will remain the twin stewards of the English men’s team was welcomed with the tired resignation one might expect from a government reorganisation after a disastrous invasion. The lack of institutional repercussions following a 4-1 Ashes flogging in Australia is shocking.

The series started with optimism and finished, like most tours have for the previous 50 years, in a hollow, sun-scorched apathy. Failure typically necessitates a ceremonial sacrifice in the corporate logic of contemporary sport, but the ECB has doubled down on Bazball, though we’re being informed that it will be considerably dampened. Whatever that implies.

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Ironically, Stokes is the evangelical advocate and Key and McCullum are the architects. After all, Stokes was the one who said that his team’s reward was “what they had become” rather than the urn while standing in the soggy wreckage of Old Trafford in 2023. One wondered whether the skipper had mistook a Test match for a TED Talk because of the intense, indirect embarrassment he felt. The choir of the Barmy Army would have been writing a chant for Pat Cummins’ hollow sentiment if he had done this after letting his side lose the first two tests in a home series. However, we are informed that Stokes doesn’t think the results matter. The legacy is the real measure.

Even before the first ball was played in Perth, this feeling of entitlement was highlighted. Stokes derided luminaries like Graham Gooch and Ian Botham as has-beens when they questioned England’s lacklustre preparation. It was an absurd, poorly timed jab that disregarded the accumulated knowledge of those who had truly prevailed in Australia. It felt like a rejection of reality to name men like the great Botham has-beens when your own team hasn’t won a Test on Australian territory since 2011.

Compare this to Pat Cummins, his equivalent. Cummins was bringing past Australian icons into the dressing room to partake in the culture and the benefits of success after clinching the Urn, while Stokes was closing ranks and disparaging his elders. It was an act of safe, inclusive leadership: Stokes acts as though he created the modern spirit of the game, while the captain recognises that he is only a temporary tenant of the Baggy Green.

His irritability has started to reoccur. His attempt to compel an early handshake in Manchester in the Indian summer of 2025 was a “toys out of the cot” moment, basically telling Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja that their personal milestones were a bother to him. Stokes introduced Harry Brook’s absurd part-time bowling and delivered caustic barbs from mid-off when the Indians refused to give up their quest for centuries, as is their right. He appeared more like a pampered child being ordered to finish his food than a visionary leader to the unbiased spectator.

In Australia, the tactical errors were just as noticeable. Although Brydon Carse’s surge could be seen as the tour’s bright spot, his numbers conceal a more depressing truth. Although Carse was officially England’s leading light with 22 wickets, he consistently lost momentum. His economy rate of just under five was the pressure valve that allowed an unimpressive Australian top order to escape in Brisbane and Adelaide. It seemed like a startling concession of power to give the new ball to Carse as England’s best bowler, Stokes, lay motionless at mid-off.

The bat-related incident was arguably the series’ most telling moment. Stokes made a swift defensive retreat while his teammates foolishly followed the all-out aggressiveness philosophy into the clutches of the Australian slip cordon. He reached his slowest fifty of his career in Adelaide with a creep off 159 balls. As if the architect had recognised the building was fundamentally flawed and abandoned the residents to dance on the rooftop, it was a rejection of the very thing he had spent years advocating.

But Ben Stokes treatment of his players has a tempting grandeur about it.

Ben Stokes was uncompromising after the Noosa incidents, when a widely shared video of an inebriated Ben Duckett served as fuel for a moralising Australian media. The irony was striking: an Australian media outlet that praises David Boon for his fifty-two cans of beer before the Ashes series or Travis Head for his post-Ashes benders suddenly found its moral compass in an Englishman.

Ben Stokes was fiercely loyal to Duckett and refused to play the headmaster. When his team was under attack, he showed great leadership by shielding a defective member to keep the unit cohesive.

One must acknowledge a certain residual trauma as an Australian spectator. The sight of Ben Stokes coming down the pavilion steps would make palms shake even if England were sitting at 20 for 4. Stokes has bought himself a degree of public immunity that no other English captain of the twenty-first century has experienced by trading these brilliant achievements.

However, the legacy narrative is about to expire as the next summer at home draws near. It is anticipated that England would triumph over both Pakistan and New Zealand. How much longer can Stokes keep English supporters on the hook after spending his entire career demonstrating his ability to accomplish the seemingly impossible?