Ben Stokes is going to become the 16th player for England and the 76th player overall to achieve this incredible feat in the conventional format.
England will play India at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Rajkot on Thursday, and Ben Stokes will be making his 100th appearance in Test cricket as the team looks to win back the lead in the five-match series. As the sixteenth player for England, he will become the 76th player on the international scene to achieve the incredible feat in the conventional style. After recording an impressive double century in a Test match in India in February 2021, Joe Root, the former captain of England, became the last player to reach the milestone.
Stokes, who made his Test cricket debut during the 2013–14 Ashes series in Australia, has scored 6251 runs in 99 matches, claimed 197 wickets, and taken 105 catches. The only players who have outperformed Stokes in all three aspects during a Test match are the great Garry Sobers and Jacques Kallis. Additionally, during their Test careers, the three players are the only ones in the world to have amassed over 6000 runs and taken over 150 wickets in cricket.
However, the most astonishing fact for Stokes, heading into the third Test match of the series against India, is that his experience in the format exceeds that of the whole home team’s batting lineup, which will play in Rajkot on Thursday.
In a lineup that lacks previous captain Virat Kohli and an injured KL Rahul, India captain Rohit Sharma is the most seasoned of the batsmen, having played 56 Tests.
Next on the list with 22 appearances is young Shubman Gill, who has made just one appearance. KS Bharat, the wicketkeeper, has made seven, Yashasvi Jaiswal has made six, and Rajat Patidar, who debuted in the second Test against England in Visakhapatnam, has made only one. Not to mention, Sarfaraz Khan or Devdutt Padikkal could receive their first cap on Thursday in place of Shreyas Iyer, who was left off of the Indian team after the first two games. That comes to a total of 92 Test matches played, which is even fewer than the number of games Stokes has played in overall.
The England team returned from Abu Dhabi after a brief mid-tour break after the Vizag game, and they have started practicing for the third Test after resolving another visa issue in Rajkot on Monday night. Ollie Pope’s amazing century of 196 runs helped them win the first match of the series in Hyderabad last month by a margin of 28 runs. But in the second Test, India came back to win decisively by 106 runs, tying the match at one.
