An exciting future England cricketer

Sky Sports are really serving us up a treat with their live coverage of the county championship match between Kent and Durham. And no I am not talking about the commentary skills or otherwise of Charles Colville.

On the first day, we saw an excellent exhibition of fast bowling from Steve Harmison overshadowed by a fabulous 261 from Reverse Sweep favourite Rob Key. Yesterday's second day was just as good as we saw Ben Stokes hit a magnificent unbeaten 122 as county champions Durham fought back from 26 for two to close just 77 runs behind Kent's 424 all out.

We first caught sight of 18 year old Stokes during coverage of the under-19 World Cup in New Zealand earlier this year, where he was England's undoubted star of the show.

Stokes seems to have transferred his obvious talent to the first-class game with consummate ease  and yesterday's 100 was his second in six days following his maiden first-class century against Nottinghamshire last week.

His innings was a sumptuous one with 15 fours and two sixes against a strong Kent attack including Makhaya Ntini, Amjad Khan and Azhar Mahmood. Stokes drove and pulled particularly well and seems to have abundant confidence for one playing in only his sixth first-class game. He certainly dominated a stand of 143 with fellow centurion Dale Benkenstein.

It would appear that we erred somewhat when omitting Stokes (and Chris Woakes for that matter) from our dozen county cricketers to watch in the 2010 season (see Part 1 and Part 2), so we will remedy that now by declaring that we will eat a cricket ball (thanks Shahid Afridi) if Stokes does not go on to play for England. He also bowls decent right arm medium, so England may well have another all-rounder in the making here.

Our confidence that he will play for England is enhanced by the fact that Stokes was actually born in New Zealand, so as well as probably following in the footsteps of Caddick Pietersen, Morgan, Kieswetter, Prior, Strauss and Lumb et all, he will also upset the Little Englanders into the bargain too. Which is never a bad thing.

Let's hope he can keep going when the play resumes later today.

  

Comments

[Ian Ashworth]

Seems a bit special this lad. And has enough gingerness to replace Colly in the middle order when the time comes for him to call it a day.

[The Reverse Sweep]

Ha ha! I was going to mention the ginger thing and Colly, but you beat me to it!