As Joe Root calmly ran the rule over the Test summer and reeled off the ways in which it had been “chaos”, “unusual” and “unsettling” for England, it felt telling that first among them was Ben Stokes calling time on his international career during a match and a series that were both still live at the time.
Cricketers announcing their retirement mid-game is nothing new. Heather Knight went on to do the same during the women’s Test at Lord’s two weeks later. Root is also too loyal to Stokes to question openly whether that scene-stealing exit before New Zealand’s win at Trent Bridge was entirely in keeping with his call for “selfless cricketers” four years earlier.
