Ben stokes

There was always something of John Cleese’s Sir Lancelot about Ben Stokes, ever eager for a flamboyant rescue mission in his own particular, as Lancelot puts it, idiom. Leave no chandelier unswung, no buckle unswashed. He would charge in, gung-holier than thou, and work out the damage later. ‘When I’m in this idiom, I sort of get carried away,’ Lancelot apologises after massacring all the guests at a wedding.  At times, it was glorious. But often, increasingly so in the second half of his England captaincy, ghastly. ‘Incredible highs and pretty low lows’ was Stokes’s own assessment – and we will always be grateful for the highs. But as England rebuild, they need to consider the manner of those lows and how many were self-inflicted.

The best thing about sport in 2020 was that any happened at all. And how good much of it was. The worst thing was that hardly anyone got to see it live. Trophies being lifted was a triumph. Trophies being lifted in front of rows and rows of empty seats was just tragic. Let’s replay the year again. This time, though, we transpose the front and back pages of our newspapers.