| Ben Stokes has often cited thesecond world war film Fury and the leadership qualities of tank commander Don “Wardaddy” Collier as inspiring the way he goes about things on and off the field. Played with some tenderness and much masculinity by Brad Pitt, all lantern jaw and slick-backed locks – a look Stokes has plumped for up until the recent buzzcut to accompany the tour of India – Don Collier’s men show him unquestioning loyalty and admiration. One of the main storylines of the film is how Collier shepherds a young “replacement” private called Norman through the realities and ultimately horrors of war. You don’t have to look particularly hard to see how Stokes has taken inspiration in the way he manages his own young charges. Whether it be thrusting a new ball into his young spinners’ hand and asking them to open the bowling, telling them not to worry – and meaning it – when their first ball, their sixth ball and plenty of other balls are smoked into the stands. Backing them with attacking fields, keeping men around the bat and away from the boundary edge, beaming with something nearing paternal pride when they club a six of their own or hit a flurry of boundaries when promoted up the order to stub out any nerves at the fag end of a day’s play. Hartley, Ahmed and Bashir have already done things in the Test arena that they will never forget and have all overcome adversity of some form in order to do so. They’ve had their feet held to the fire and come out the other side better off for it. Words are one thing, action is another. Under Stokes’s command, this England side are proving adept at both. The right captain, the right moment “The thought of going into a Test in India with three spinners whose experience added up to a bag of buttons and a gob stopper is extraordinary. But, somehow, Stokes made it work.” Tanya Aldred’s delicious line provided the inspiration for this week’s Spin. Stokes himself explained after the defeat in Vizag that “captaining the inexperienced spinners wasn’t a challenge whatsoever, I absolutely loved it”. Stokes does seem to relish the role of birthing Test cricketers and it is a measure of his man-management skills and the atmosphere that he and McCullum have cultivated that the players he hands debuts too often hit their straps right away. Three inexperienced spinners – Will Jacks, Ahmed and Hartley have taken a five-wicket haul on their Test debut with Stokes at the helm. Bashir pocketed Rohit Sharma on his way to taking four wickets in Vizag, Harry Brook made his Test debut under Stokes at the Oval against South Africa in 2022 and went on to scorch 809 runs in his first six Test matches at a strike rate of very nearly 100. At the other end of the spectrum – at least when it comes to age and experience – Joe Root, Jimmy Anderson and the latterly departed Stuart Broad have all decreed that playing under Stokes had given them the most enjoyment on a cricket field of their entire careers. It’s clear that Stokes is able to harness something special and is the rightman OF the moment for English cricket. Sometimes an England captain comes along with exactly the right attributes at exactly the right time, which is precisely what happened when Nasser Hussain took hold of a bottom-of-the-pile England in 1999 and forged them with a steel that was both necessary and lacking. While Hussain’s gritty, sometimes dyspeptic captaincy was absolutely what England needed at the time, it does offer a marked contrast to the current way of things. Rob Key also recalls in his book – appropriately titled Oi Key: Tales of a Journeyman Cricketer – the icy tongue-lashing he was given during his debut Test while fielding in the slips and sharing a joke with his longtime mate Andrew Flintoff. “Oi, Key, you fat c***! I didn’t put you there to chat to your fat f***ing mate all day. F***ing concentrate!” Simpler times. Quote of the week “That is the first delivery I learned … I kept it with me and I kept on using it to my advantage and now even in Test cricket when you get wickets off it, it’s great” – Jasprit Bumrah talks about that stump-splattering yorker to Ollie Pope. Still want more? England remain unrepentant about their aggressive style after a creditable defeat in Vizag, writes Tanya Aldred. Tanya has also been chatting to Yorkshire fans about how they feel about the return of Colin Graves as chairman. Raf Nicholson assesses the latest shake-up of the women’s domestic game in England and hopes the ECB has learnt from past errors. And here’s a Guardian leader on the threats to Test cricket and its enduring worth. Memory lane | 