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Ben Stokes has been a magnificent player for England, and leaves a legacy of individual brilliance and inspirational leadership. However you want to judge him, whether it is the quality of his bowling, his batting and his fielding, his sometimes heroic determination, or the character that makes him uniquely able to connect with teammates and with the public, he is among the very best.

The way he became such an important figure in English cricket, and the fact that he is a seam‑bowling all-rounder, means he will always be compared with Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff, but unlike them he excelled also at captaincy. He is a man of great empathy, which makes him unusually good with young players, at making them feel comfortable in an environment that can be difficult to enter.

The statistics will tell only part of the story of his international career: his contribution has been so much more than numbers. It is the personality of the man, the way he plays the game, the way he talks about it, and the massive moments of which he has been at the heart.

The summer of 2019 sticks out as the pinnacle of his career. In the World Cup final at Lord’s he showed himself to be such an adaptable player. He is known for his shot play but to bat with such intelligence, to adapt his talent to the occasion and for the team, was brilliant. That England won that World Cup was hugely down to that effort, on a difficult wicket and with the pressure of chasing.

Then at Headingley in the Ashes six weeks later, in the greatest format and against England’s greatest rivals, he came up with another incredible innings. He showed such concentration, a good defence and real stubbornness as he built the foundations before going on to play some remarkable shots, particularly during that last‑wicket stand of 76 with Jack Leach, who famously contributed a solitary run. It was a monumental effort that demonstrated so much heart and skill and created so much drama.

There have been many achievements since, including these last four years as Test captain, but any appreciation of Stokes’s career will come back to these two moments. He is a man for the big occasion, and perhaps those days are now over, but I hope he is still going to play a lot of cricket and get a lot of pleasure from it.

I first came across him when he featured in a Sunday League game at the Oval for Durham against Surrey. He bowled a couple of balls and I thought: “I fancy this guy.” So I tried to hoick him into the stands, and of course my middle stump went cartwheeling. Later I was lucky enough to coach England and be around the dressing room when he was involved.

He came through a real trauma in 2017 and 2018, when he was eventually found not guilty of affray after a fight outside a Bristol nightclub. I remember when he first came back into the international setup, and he addressed the group in the dressing room in Dunedin. He spoke about how much it meant to him to play for England, how it had nearly all been taken away from him, and he showed incredible strength of character to come back from that as he did. On a tour of the Caribbean soon after that I happened to catch him in the back of the dressing room having a quiet cigarette and we got talking, about the expectation he was putting on himself and how he was dealing with that mentally. I have so much respect for the way he has come through his various challenges.

Stokes is a warrior on the field, but we all know he is fallible. And I suppose this has helped to make him incredibly popular. When our heroes show vulnerability, when they make mistakes and fight their way back from them, it all contributes to making them more real and relatable. It’s often said that good humans make good cricketers, and it is often true. But there are also some who aren’t perfect human beings, but when they walk on to a big stage they embrace it, they use that energy to drive themselves to another level, and they take those occasions by the scruff of the neck. I was in Cape Town in 2016 to witness a brilliant innings, when he scored 258 and put on 399 in partnership with Jonny Bairstow: he was the sort of player who gets people out of the bars and keeps them in their seats, because when he’s at the crease the game is interesting.

It did surprise me that he made this announcement in the middle of a game. Perhaps a more reserved character would have been happy to avoid that limelight. But even if they won’t get the chance to see him bat or bowl, it feels right that the public will get one final chance to show their appreciation for a wonderful international career, knowing that it is coming to an end, and to thank him for all the wonderful memories he helped to create for them. I’m so pleased that tickets for the fifth day at Trent Bridge will be free. Hopefully there will be a really good crowd, and a player who has been behind so many special moments will be able to enjoy one more of them.