One more place to go – Ben Stokes targets top spot in Test rankings for England

The one-off game against Zimbabwe, beginning on Thursday, is followed by a five-match home series against India and a huge Ashes trip this winter.

Ben Stokes smiles during a press conference on Wednesday (Mike Egerton/PA) (PA Wire)

England’s Test captain Ben Stokes has set his sights on taking his team to number one in the world rankings.

Sir Andrew Strauss was the last England skipper to reach the summit back in 2011, holding the title for less than a year, but the annual update of the International Cricket Council’s table recently catapulted Stokes’ side from fifth to second. Only rivals Australia remain above them.

When he took over from Joe Root in 2022, the team had slumped to sixth and their lowest points tally in 27 years, but have since won 22 of their last 35 matches.

With Thursday’s one-off game against Zimbabwe followed by a five-match home series against India and a huge Ashes trip Down Under to come this winter, further successes could lift them back to top.

And Stokes made his ambitions plain in a message to head coach Brendon McCullum and managing director Rob Key.

“When the rankings came out, I did send Baz and Keysy a text saying, ‘We’ve got one more place to go’,” he said.

“Everyone knows when things are going well for us as a team we are incredibly hard to stop. We know it doesn’t always go that way.

“The word ‘ruthless’, I’m not a big fan of. The words I do love and what I’ve tried to instil in this team is ‘dominance’ and ‘dominate’.

“Whatever situation we find ourselves in the game, that’s the word I want to be at the front of our heads.

ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.

ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.

“We have Zimbabwe now and that’s our sole focus at the moment. We know what we have coming up, but we will deal with the challenge of Zimbabwe then as we get closer to India starting, turn our focus to that.”

England finished a subdued fifth in the most recent World Test Championship table, a curiously uneven structure that rewards teams with gentler fixture lists and heavily penalises slow over-rates.

Stokes has been an outspoken critic of the formula in the past and suggested England’s rankings rise bolstered his case.

“I did make some comments around the World Test Championship and they might make a little bit more sense now, considering we’ve jumped up to second,” he said.

This week’s match at Trent Bridge represents Stokes’ first competitive action since December, when he tore his hamstring in Hamilton. It was a recurrence of a similar injury sustained last summer, leading to a second successive bout of surgery and rehabilitation.

He intends to be back as a fully-functioning all-rounder, though may not be required to take an intensive bowling load over the coming days in Nottingham.

“I’ve obviously been training a lot over the last two months and got myself back as close as I possibly can to match intensity,” he said.

“But this will be my first game in a while. There is a bit of a gap between how far I can push myself in training and a game.

“I’ve done all the work I need to to get out there and bowl some overs, but I’ve got to be mindful of where I am and build myself back up to proper match workload for later on in the summer. I’m not getting any younger.”