Ben Stokes promoted himself to No.3 on Day 3 of the fifth Ashes Test. Moeen Ali was unable to bat in that position due to injury and the fact that he hadn’t fielded for much of the Australian innings on the previous day, necessitating the England captain’s promotion and he played a pivotal role in England getting their lead close to 400.
In what was a typically aggressive batting performance, England scored 389 runs in a single day’s play and Stokes shared a couple of major partnerships with opener Zak Crawley and then with Joe Root. Stokes and Crawley put up 61 runs for the second wicket off just 57 balls. He then put up 73 runs of just 79 balls with Root for the fourth before falling to Todd Murphy.
Stokes hit one six in the innings. It was a rather fortuitous one with Mitchell Starc palming the ball over the boundary after being unable to hold on to a catch off the third ball of the 27th over after Stokes skied an attempted pull shot off Josh Hazlewood. It was, however, enough for him to surpass an 18-year-old record held by former captain Kevin Pietersen.
That was Stokes’ 15th six of the series, which is the most by anyone over the course of a single edition of the Ashes. Pietersen had hit 14 sixes while Stokes himself in third spot for the 13 he hit in 2019. His tally is also the joint second-most number of sixes hit by any batter in any Test series. He equaled Shimron Hetmyer’s tally, although the West Indies batter had hit 15 sixes over the course of just two Test matches against Bangladesh in 2019. India captain Rohit Sharma leads that list with the 19 sixes that he hit in a three-match Test series at home against South Africa in 2019.
Nine of Stokes’ sixes came in a single, incredible innings in England’s second innings during the second Test at Lord’s. Stokes went berzerk after England lost their sixth wicket for 193 runs while chasing a target of 371 and at one point threatened to take England to victory single-handedly. He smashed 155 in the innings before finally falling to Hazlewood. Stokes had scored 93 off 88 balls in a 108-run stand for the sixth wicket with Stuart Broad. His tally of nine sixes was the highest by any batter in a single Ashes innings. It also helped him overtake Kevin Pietersen’s record of most sixes in the history of the Ashes. Pietersen had hit 24 while Stokes’s tally at being dismissed on Saturday now stands at 39.
