England vs Pakistan: Ben Stokes learns how to construct an innings to evolve his one-day game

Stokes took an unusually slow 32 balls to make 12 runs before hitting the accelerator to hit 74 off 75 balls

Stokes hit a career-best 75 for England (Getty)

Strategy and Ben Stokes were rarely close acquaintances when he first announced himself in international cricket. But players evolve and Stokes, at least on the evidence of Cardiff, looks like he has added that extra dimension to his batting.

Stokes possesses natural talent in abundance but has been let down on occasion by a lack of what wise heads call “game craft,” broadly, the knowledge of tailoring one’s deeds to the situation.

Tellingly, in an interview with Sky Sports before Sunday’s final one-day international against Pakistan, Stokes talked about taking his time at the crease, playing himself in, and constructing an innings - words he followed with deeds a few hours later when he made 74, his highest one-day score for England.

The fact that he acknowledged a need to take his time and get accustomed to conditions, suggests he has let himself down previously by being too impetuous early in his innings. Normally that is a mistake one-day players make when taking the step into Test cricket. But Stokes has cracked the longer game, at least in terms of approach and tempo, but not yet the shorter one, though Sunday’s knock suggests that may be about to change.

He needed some luck to prosper, something he got when Sarfraz Ahmed missed a stumping chance off the excellent left-arm spin of Imad Wasim. Stokes had scored one at the time and he realised that with the ball turning for Imad, as well as the other spinners, that this was a chance for him to slay another demon, especially with a winter in Asia coming up, namely his unease on slow, grippy pitches.

There can be a thin line, in one-day cricket, between taking your time and being selfish, though nobody would accuse Stokes of the latter. His bedding down at the crease was also helped by three things: Jason Roy was going well when Stokes joined him, there were plenty of overs left when he came to the crease (35.3), and England had already won the series.

Denial, especially for someone as all action as Stokes, can be purgatory. In the past, he would have risked a big shot to ease the pressure and hang the consequences. But here he felt his way cautiously, so cautiously that it took him 32 balls to make 12 runs, a run-rate almost unheard of in the modern game.

Stokes's progress was halted when he was struck by the ball in the nether regions (Getty)

But Stokes is self-aware enough to know that he possesses such power and range of stroke that he can make good a slow start, something he eventually did, his 74 taking just 75 balls.

His acceleration began when he struck Mohammad Nawaz for a flat six over mid-off to go to 40. The Swalec stadium has short straight boundaries and while he didn’t get satisfactory elevation on the shot, his brutal power carried the ball far enough. The shot brought increased fluency in its wake but that may have been more to do with Nawaz not bowling his left-arm spin as skilfully as Imad and pace coming on at the other end.

A man, you suspect, who has a close relationship with adrenalin, Stokes has always preferred facing pace. When Mitchell Johnson was cowing England’s batsmen into meek submission at the WACA in 2013/14, Stokes stood tall relishing the challenge and being rewarded with a maiden Test hundred to savour, albeit in a losing cause.

Playing fast bowling relies mostly on instinct, something extremely well developed in Stokes. Playing spin allows time for other thoughts, even doubt, to mess with a batsman’s decision-making, something that England’s players will encounter when they play Bangladesh and India away this winter.

In some ways, the match and pitch in Cardiff was a decent trial run for those two visits, with England forewarned after Pakistan won by four wickets, their first success of the series.

It certainly suited the visitors better than the other venues and they played with panache, their victory fashioned by Sarfraz Ahmed (90) and Shoaib Malik (77), with Stokes the bowler not as influential as Stokes the batsman.

As for England, experimenting with their line-up, their batting went doggo once Stokes was out, scoring just 58 runs off the last 10 overs. Having given himself time to get in Stokes should, ironically, have stayed in longer than he did.