Where does Ben Stokes rank among the top allrounders of all time?

It needs to be mentioned here that the stats for these 22 players vary widely, in terms of both runs and wickets. Sobers scored 4790 runs and Kallis 4372 in 45 Tests, while Pollock scored only 1561, and Wasim Akram 1506. On the other hand, Kallis took only 103 wickets, and Sobers 126, compared to 253 by Hadlee, 203 by Botham, 189 by Kapil, 185 by Pollock, and 180 by Khan. While they are all broadly categorised as allrounders, their roles in their teams were very different: Sobers and Kallis were clearly batting allrounders, while Hadlee, Botham, Kapil and Pollock were largely bowling allrounders.Sobers scored 19.7% of West Indies’ bat runs in these 45 Tests, Kallis contributed 18.2%, but in terms of percentage of team wickets, Kallis only contributed 14.2% and Sobers 16.5%. Hadlee, meanwhile, scored only 10.2% of his team’s runs but took a whopping 37.9% of their wickets. Pollock’s batting contribution to South Africa’s kitty was minimal. He scored only 7.1% of their runs in these 45 Tests, which is the second-lowest percentage among the 22 allrounders in this list – only Chaminda Vaas, with 7%, is lower – but took 25.2% of South Africa’s wickets. The percentages for Khan were 11.9 (runs) and 28.2 (wickets).

For Stokes, the numbers are even: he has scored 14.8% of the England’s bat runs, and taken 14.7% of their wickets. That essentially makes him more of a batting allrounder, given that bowling allrounders tend to take around 25% of their team’s wickets. Botham, for instance, took 31.2% of England’s wickets and scored 13.1% of their runs in his best 45 Tests, between June 1978 and July 1982. The corresponding numbers for Greig were 17.2% and 13.8%, and for Flintoff 22.3% of the wickets and 11.8% of the runs. The scatter plot above indicates where these 22 allrounders are positioned with respect to the percentage of team runs and team wickets they contributed in their best 45 Tests. It is clear from the plot that Stokes makes bigger contributions with the bat than with the ball. Only three among these 22 allrounders – Sobers, Kallis and Shakib Al Hasan – score a higher percentage of their team’s runs, while 19 take a higher percentage of wickets.With Stokes, though, just the number of wickets doesn’t do full justice to his contribution as a bowler. He bowls the tough overs and the long spells when England are looking for breakthroughs, and that is best illustrated by this stat: 41 of his 156 career wickets have ended batting partnerships of 50-plus. The percentage of 26.3 is the highest among all fast bowlers who have taken 100-plus career wickets.

And here is further proof of Stokes’ bowling effectiveness when the rest of the attack didn’t have things going their way. On the ten occasions when he has taken a four-wicket haul, he has a strike rate of 24.7 balls per wicket; in those innings, the rest of the attack struck every 93.3 balls. The ratio of 3.8 between the two strike rates is the third best among all bowlers with at least ten four-fors – there are 183 bowlers on that list. Only Fidel Edwards and Peter Pollock have a better ratio, and then just marginally. The latest such example was the Southampton Test against West Indies, when Stokes took 4 for 49 in 14 overs in the first innings while the rest of England’s attack took the remaining six wickets in 88 overs.The sample size is admittedly small here, but it illustrates Stokes’ ability to make things happen when his team-mates aren’t quite getting it right. In bowler-friendly conditions, when Anderson, Broad and Co are running through batting line-ups, Stokes sometimes doesn’t even get to bowl. His value is when things get tougher for the bowlers, and then his contributions are invaluable.

Maintaining a 40-plus average with bat and a sub-30 average with ball over an extended period of time is rare for most allrounders – most tend to slip up with either bat or ball – but Stokes now has an ongoing streak of 50 such Tests: since October 2015, he averages 40.63 with the bat and 28.69 with the ball. In all of Test cricket, there are only two allrounders who have maintained these stats for more than 50 Tests: Khan (81 Tests) and Kallis (76). (These are the longest such streaks for each player.)From his seventh to his 87th Test, Khan averaged 40.06 with the bat and 22.22 with the ball. Given that his entire career lasted 88 Tests, that means the period in which he crossed that threshold covered 92% of his career, which is remarkable. The longest such streak for Kallis extended from his 14th to his 89th Test, during which period he averaged 61.62 with bat, and 29.93 with ball. While averaging over 40 with the bat wasn’t much of a problem for him, Kallis became less of a bowler later in his career and his average crept over 30, though his career bowling average remained a respectable 32.65.ESPNcricinfo LtdStokes’ current streak of 50 is already two Tests better than Botham. Between February 1978 and July 1982, Botham had a 48-Test streak where he averaged 40.31 with bat and 23.44 with ball, but thereafter his batting average slipped below 40. Flintoff’s longest such streak was 42 matches, while Greig’s was 37. There have only been eight allrounders who have had such streaks of 40-plus Tests, including Daniel Vettori, who is joint fifth with 48 such Tests, ahead of much bigger names.Since the start of 2016, Stokes has been one of the pillars of England’s batting, despite coming in relatively low, at No. 5 or 6: in this period, only Joe Root has scored more runs (4612) at a marginally better average (44.77, to Stokes’ 43.3). Since the start of 2019, Stokes has been the undisputed leader in the batting line-up, scoring 1453 runs at 53.81; no other player has scored 600-plus runs at a 40-plus average in this period.Stokes’ value in the batting line-up is especially immense in situations when England have lost wickets relatively early and need the lower middle order to lift the team to a reasonable total. With his ability to block or attack as the situation demands, Stokes has the game to see off dangerous bowling spells, and then attack and score quick runs with the lower order. When batting at No. 5 or lower since the start of 2016, he has played 34 innings when England have made 300-plus totals; in those innings, he has scored 2004 runs, which works out to 14.9% of England’s runs. That is the highest percentage of runs scored by any England batsman at No. 5 or lower, in a stretch of 34 innings when the team has scored 300 or more. His percentage is marginally higher than the best 34-innings sequences of Graham Thorpe, Paul Collingwood, Botham and Ian Bell. That, in a nutshell, illustrates Stokes’ importance in the lower middle order.

Through this article, Stokes’ current peak has been compared with the all-time peaks of legends who have retired, which is slightly unfair to Stokes because he is likely to scale greater heights – or at least maintain his current form – over the next few years. If he does manage that, a similar analysis in a couple of years could see him even higher up the list of the greatest allrounders of all time.