There is a phrase in sport: “you had to be there.”
With Ben Stokes, you had to be there every single time. His career was not a collection of polished performances built on averages and consistency. It was a series of seismic moments that landed like thunderclaps, each one more audacious than the last.
As Ben Stokes retires, the curtain falls on his 15-year international career, here are 10 things in cricket history that only Benjamin Andrew Stokes could have pulled off. Not because no one else tried, but because no one else was built the way he was built.
1. Winning a World Cup Final on a Tied Super Over
The 2019 Cricket World Cup Final at Lord’s on 14 July 2019 remains the most dramatic single day in the history of the format. England needed to beat New Zealand to win their first-ever 50-over World Cup. Stokes walked in with England slumping at 86 for 4 and played an unbeaten 84 off 98 balls to drag them level with New Zealand’s total of 241. Off the final ball, a diving throw deflected off his bat for a boundary overthrow. Scores level. Super Over. Scores level again. England won on boundary count.
But here is what most people forget: Stokes walked back out to bat in the Super Over. Not out, on 84, having just played the innings of his life, he stepped back out under the most suffocating pressure the game can generate and hit eight off three balls. He did not flinch. He did not blink. He soaked up the noise, the chaos, and the weight of expectation and delivered. There is no other cricketer alive who does that with such alarming calmness.
2. The Headingley Miracle: 135 Not Out from 286 for 9
If the World Cup Final was extraordinary, Headingley was from another universe entirely. England, in the third Ashes Test of 2019, had been bowled out for 67 in their first innings. They needed 359 to win. They were 286 for 9 when Stokes was still at the crease. The last wicket partner was Jack Leach, a number 11 who ultimately scored one run off 17 balls. Seventy-three runs were needed. England’s last pair was at the crease.
What followed has been rated by Wisden as the Greatest Hundred of the Decade. Stokes made 135 not out off 219 balls, hitting 11 fours and eight sixes in a record chase that no one in the ground believed was possible. He later said: “Never give up. It’s not over till it’s over.” That is not a cliche from him. That is a lived philosophy. No other cricketer in the modern era has won a Test match from that position with those resources and under that pressure.
3. Scoring 258 Off 198 Balls Facing a Hat-Trick Ball
January 2016. Cape Town. Stokes arrived at the crease for England against South Africa with the score at 167 for 4. The bowler was Kagiso Rabada, one of the most fearsome fast bowlers on the planet, and the next delivery was a hat-trick ball. Most batsmen survive. Stokes counter-attacked. He made 258 off 198 balls, hitting 30 fours and 11 sixes. It is the second-fastest double century in Test history. It is also the highest score ever made by a number six batsman in Test cricket.
In the morning session on day two alone, he scored 130 runs, the most by any batsman in a pre-lunch session in Test history. He and Jonny Bairstow put on 399 together for the sixth wicket, a world record that still stands. Facing a hat-trick ball and turning it into one of the great Test innings is the sort of narrative that belongs in fiction. Stokes put it in the record books instead.
READ MORE: The End of an Era of Dominance: Benjamin Andrew Stokes Bids Goodbye to Cricket
4. Taking 6 for 22 on the Same Ground Where He Held That Six-Hit Record
Most people remember Stokes as a batsman who bowls. Lord’s 2017 against West Indies reminded everyone he could dismantle a batting lineup with the ball just as thoroughly. He returned figures of 6 for 22, the best bowling of his Test career, in an innings that demolished West Indies for a paltry total. For good measure, he also scored 60 with the bat in the same game as England wrapped up a nine-wicket win.
Taking six wickets for 22 runs in a Test innings is remarkable under any circumstances. Doing it in a Lord’s Test while also contributing as a genuine number-order batsman is the work of a true all-rounder, not a batting novelty who chips in with occasional wickets.
5. Scoring the Highest Individual ODI Score by an Englishman After Coming Out of Retirement
In July 2022, Stokes announced his retirement from ODI cricket. He said the format was taking too great a toll on his body and that he needed to protect himself for Test cricket. Reasonable. Sensible. Very un-Stokes. Then, 14 months later, he reversed that decision to play in the 2023 Cricket World Cup. And almost immediately upon returning, in his very first bilateral series back, he made 182 off 124 balls against New Zealand at The Oval. It was, and remains, the highest individual ODI score by an England player in history.
Coming out of a year-long white-ball retirement and immediately hitting the highest score your country has ever produced in the format is a level of audacity that defies rational explanation. That is not form. That is Stokes.
6. Winning a Second World Cup Final in a Different Format Three Years Later
The 2022 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Final in Melbourne. England versus Pakistan. Stokes walked in with England in a chase that was slipping away. He made 52 not out off 49 balls, calmly steering England to victory. He also took a wicket with the ball in the same game. Player of the Match. World Cup winner. Again. In a different format. Three years on.
Two World Cup finals. Two match-defining performances. Two winner’s medals. In cricket history, only a handful of players have won World Cups in multiple formats. To be the decisive individual in the final both times is a feat of an entirely different order.
7. Retiring From ODIs, Coming Back, and Immediately Breaking England’s All-Time Batting Record in the Format
This one deserves its own entry separate from Number 5, because it tells you something deeper about Stokes. He did not come back from ODI retirement for sentiment or nostalgia. He came back, assessed the format, and broke England’s all-time individual ODI batting record inside his first few games. The 182 was not the work of a man easing himself back in. It was a full-blooded statement.
There is a breed of cricketer who plays to records. Then there is a breed who are indifferent to them, who simply play the game with complete intent and let the records land where they may. Stokes belongs to the second category, which is precisely why so many of them have his name on them.
8. Scoring the Fastest Test Half-Century by an Englishman at 33 Years Old
In July 2024, opening the second innings for England against West Indies at Edgbaston, Stokes reached his fifty off just 24 balls. He broke Ian Botham’s 43-year-old record for the fastest Test half-century by an England player, set in 1981. Botham’s record had stood for four decades. Stokes broke it in his mid-thirties, an age when most cricketers are thinking about slowing down rather than accelerating through their scoring.
For context, he finished on 57 not out, having hit nine fours and two sixes. This was not a slog in a dead match. This was a captain rewriting history by the sheer force of his intent and the sheer speed of his bat.
9. Taking a Wicket Immediately After Announcing His Retirement Mid-Match
On 28 June 2026, at Trent Bridge, Stokes told his teammates before play on day four of the third Test against New Zealand that he was retiring. He told them to “give absolutely everything for another two days” and asked them to hold their emotion until the game was done. The ECB confirmed the news publicly at 3.25pm as Stokes was in the middle of a bowling spell.
The Trent Bridge crowd rose as one. A standing ovation washed over the ground. Then Stokes ran in and took a wicket off his very next delivery. The crowd erupted. It was, by any measure, the most perfectly timed farewell gesture in the history of cricket. Nobody writes endings like that. Not novelists, not screenwriters, and certainly not cricketers. Except Stokes, who did it in real time, in front of 16,000 people.
10. Becoming One of Only Three Men in History With 7,000 Test Runs and 200 Test Wickets
This last entry is not about one single moment. It is about the totality of what he did over 122 Tests. The club of cricketers with 7,000 Test runs and 200 Test wickets has three members: Sir Garfield Sobers, Jacques Kallis, and Ben Stokes. That is the company he keeps. Two men widely considered the greatest all-rounders the game has ever seen, and Stokes.
The numbers on their own would be extraordinary. The context makes them almost unbelievable. Stokes missed significant chunks of his career through injury and a voluntary mental health break in 2021. He dealt with a legal case in 2017 and 2018 that cost him an entire Ashes series. He bowled fast, batted fearlessly, and fielded brilliantly for 15 years. And he still arrived in that company. Three men in history. He is one of them.
Final Words
Cricket produces brilliant cricketers with regularity. It produces match-winners with something approaching frequency. But it produces players like Ben Stokes once in a generation, if that. A man for whom no situation was too far gone, no target too steep, no crowd too loud, and no occasion too large. He leaves the international game having pulled off things that no one else in the history of the sport has managed. That is not hyperbole. That is simply his record.
The game will carry on. It always does. But it will carry a Stokes-shaped space in its great moments for a very long time.
Lucky Raina is a complete cricket writer chasing corporate dreams by day and cricket stories by night. Once a promising Under 16 cricketer, life took him down a different pitch but the love for the game never left.
