Untouchable Ben Stokes is better player at 24 than I was, insists Sir Ian Botham

For those of us who were around at the time there had been nothing like Botham

Ben Stokes flays the South African bowling on his way to 258 at Newlands on Sunday (Getty)

Gazing out on to the South Atlantic today, a great all-rounder of yore reflected on the modern version. It hardly needed the question to be asked before Sir Ian Botham was off and running about Ben Stokes. He remembered what it was like to be 24 with the world at his feet.

“He will feel untouchable at the moment,” said Sir Ian. “He will feel his game is right up there; his confidence will be oozing and that will be good for the team as it will ooze on to the team and they will all pick up on that.

“It’s a little bit like being in the jungle – the dominant male lion: the rest feed off it. That’s how he’ll be. He’ll be the dominant male in that side for a few years to come.”

For those of us who were around at the time there had been nothing like Botham. From the moment he stepped into the England side at the age of 21 he was a force of nature and, although both men would resist, it is impossible to avoid drawing the comparison with this particular successor – or, indeed, to invoke the other outstanding all-rounders who have studded English cricket since the middle part of the last century.

The others were Trevor Bailey, Tony Greig and Andrew Flintoff. Four of the five – Bailey being the exclusion – were cut from similar cloth, dashing, fearless, endlessly competitive and lavishly talented in every facet of the game.

“It was fun,” said Botham, speaking at the idyllic Tintswalo Lodge hotel near Cape Town. “And Ben Stokes will be enjoying it as well. He’ll see it as fun as well. You walk out and you empty the bars rather then fill them and it’s a nice feeling. Then you get out and you see them all going back in for a beer and you think, ‘Sorry, lads: can’t do it every day.’ And he can’t do it every day, either. That’s what people have to remember. You have to give him the right to fail.”

Sir Ian Botham holds court for the press yesterday (Getty)

Stokes’ life has probably changed for ever as a result of his astonishing innings of 258 in the second Test in Cape Town. It came off 196 balls and one of the several records it broke was that off the fastest double hundred for England, held for the last 33 years by one Sir Ian Botham.

It was fascinating and pertinent to listen to Botham enthuse about Stokes and assess what a player he could become. There are similarities, which the England legend recognises, in the way they approach their game.

“Brilliant, absolutely brilliant,” Botham said. “What I did was yesterday’s news, what he did is today’s news. That’s the way it is. I held that record for 33 years, so it was about time it got broken really, isn’t it? His bowling can only get better, he has all the attributes.

“Let him go. Mike Brearley did absolutely the same with me. There was no leash in any way. Perhaps there hasn’t been anything quite like him. As a player he’s probably better than I was at 24, I don’t know. He’d certainly be up there. The problem is, he’s got a lot of very good players around him so it’s not quite so easy to take the mantle. So people have to put everything into perspective. But he is crucial to [Alastair] Cook’s selection policy: if he’s fit and playing, then Cook actually has an option of two other players in his mind. He is the genuine article.”

Stokes has now completed 21 Tests for England, which Botham had done by the time he was 23. But Stokes’ record compares reasonably favourably. He has scored 1,282 runs at 33.74 and taken 47 wickets at 41.94, while Botham had 1,035 runs at 38.33 and 107 wickets at 19.61.

The bravura display which Stokes put on at Newlands last Sunday can, in its way, be compared with the 149 Botham made at Headingley in 1981. Nothing will ever be quite the same again.

“It will change his life,” said Botham. “I don’t think it will affect Ben that much. Ben Stokes is a pretty uncomplicated character, he likes to go toe to toe with the opposition, he doesn’t hold back, if there is a confrontation he wants to be part of it and that is exactly what motivates him. It is certainly what motivated me and I am sure it’s what motivates him, to be in the thick of it.”

His delight at seeing Stokes plunder 11 sixes on Sunday is palpable. Botham is genuinely glad that he was there. “That was one of those moments when you can just say, ‘I was there and I saw it,’” he said. “It’s quite remarkable when you think back to Headingley ’81. I know there were only about 10,000 people in the ground but I have met three and a half million who were there. But I was there for Ben Stokes.

“I think the next three years we will give a pretty good idea of how good he is going to be, not how poor he is going to be. It is just what level he achieves because he is certainly going to be at a very good level. It’s just how far he can take it from there, and that will only come with time.”

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