'Speed, stamina and skill - Stokes is now England's best seamer'

Headingley and Bristol. Two World Cups. A surgeon's scalpel to both knee and hamstring.

All of that and plenty more has been packed into the past eight years of Ben Stokes' career.

On day two of the fourth Test against India at Old Trafford he sheepishly led England from the field, not for his batting or a dash of fielding brilliance, but with the match ball in his hand.

For the first time since September 2017 he had taken five wickets in a Test innings.

This was a landmark moment eight months in the making, after eight years of waiting.

When, 11,000 miles from home on New Zealand's north island, Stokes' hamstring pinged for the second time in five months in December, it was not outlandish to question whether Stokes would bowl in a Test again.

It says a lot about Stokes that he never considered such an outcome.

"Something else to overcome…go on then!!!!!!!!" he posted on social media afterwards.

"I've got so much more left in this tank and so much more blood sweat and tears to go through for my team and this shirt."

Hours of rehab followed. Squats at home and then in the gym.

A light jog and then runs on the track behind Durham's Chester-le-Street home.

When his county team-mates were conducting their pre-season media duties in March, Stokes was jogging between cones in a woolly hat and leggings.

The reward for that is a five-wicket haul 76 Tests after his last. No player in Test history has had to wait longer between achieving the feat.

The haul takes Stokes' wicket tally against India this summer to 16 – the most on either side.

With three innings to go, it is the most scalps Stokes has taken in a single series, while the 129 overs he has bowled also make this his busiest contest.

His previous record on both statistics was his very first series – the 2013-14 Ashes when the hair was shorter, complexion more fresh-faced and right arm bare of the phoenix tattoo that now epitomises his career.

Statistics tell you plenty about Stokes' bowling this summer.

His average speed of 84.2mph is his best since 2019. He has bowled 30% of deliveries on a good line and length – a figure he has never bettered.

But so much so about Stokes in 2025 has been about the way it has felt.

In the 2023 Ashes, before the knee and hamstring ops, Stokes was still trying but when he did bring himself on to bowl it seemed to push the fibres holding his body together to their limits.

The run-up was laboured and while there were still those moments, Stokes relied on aura every bit as much as skill.

Before this series began, Stokes said the time off after his January operation had allowed him to iron out unintentional eccentricities that had crept into his bowling.

He watched videos of his match-winning spell against South Africa in Cape Town in 2020 for inspiration.

"There's so many similarities to that," said opener Zak Crawley, comparing Stokes at Old Trafford to that day at Newlands when he stood at third slip.

"He was bowling quickly back then. He's got that pace back now and the way he just gets that away movement from the right-hander, that zip, which is as much as anyone in the world really.

"He's a proper wicket-taker and he can make things happen and that's certainly the case when I first came the side back then and he seems to have got that back now, which is a phenomenal effort considering the injuries he's had."

As Crawley says, the flow is back.

Stokes has raced in, no longer looking like a man who hurts with every step.

His front-knee brace is rock solid, allowing hip and side to propel his action to find the kick and bounce from the flattest pitches.

The marathon spells were supposed to be banned but bursts of 9.2 overs and 10 overs in last week's win at Lord's, where not even his mate from Under-13s Joe Root could take the ball from his hand, were followed by another 10 on the spin here either side of lunch.

The result has not only been a flurry of wickets but a collection of crucial ones.

Akash Deep's off stump was uprooted at Lord's to set up the final-day thriller and Jasprit Bumrah bounced out the following day when he and Ravindra Jadeja threatened the improbable.

At Headingley, Stokes dismissed Karun Nair and Shardul Thakur to allow Josh Tongue to mop up the tail. And in Manchester, he saw off his opposite number Shubman Gill, Sai Sudharsan – the top-scorer in India's innings - and Washington Sundar, whose partnership with Rishabh Pant was pushing India towards the ascendancy.

Despite not making a fifty in any of his six innings, Stokes has fair claim to being their player of the series.

After this, England's captain will have another three-and-a-half months off – planned rather than enforced - before the Ashes in Australia, where his Test journey began.

Stokes is wiser these days.

Where team-mate Ian Bell had to pull him away from a confrontation with Brad Haddin 12 years ago - the Australia wicketkeeper took pleasure in a no-ball denying the all-rounder his first wicket - last week it was Stokes stepping in to separate his bowler Brydon Carse from confronting Ravindra Jadeja.

That level-headedness is what England fans must now cling to. They must hope that, as Joe Root suggested last week, Stokes knows his body best and will not push it beyond its limits again.

Because while the talk about England needing Stokes to fulfil his role as a fourth seamer is valid, it also does him a disservice.

The work has paid off. Stokes is no fourth seamer.

These days he is England's number one.