Cometh the hour cometh the man- Embracing Redemption in a Stokesy style
Not all day you get a chance to witness the heavens waving the accolades for one’s labor of love. It was the day I felt fierce in my eyes, watching the Classy Stokes weaving his willow, churning out a match-winning performance against Pakistan in the T20 World Cup 2022 Final on Sunday, basking the glory of redemption in his style.
But where did it all begin? For obvious reasons, the journey has been arduous. Not so long ago, I was watching the documentary — ‘Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes’ and felt awestruck. I would call it a rhetoric work of art– a documentary that chronicles the peaks and troughs of Ben Stokes’ cricketing career. A tale of hardships, a tale of tears, and a tale of redemption.
For a sporting bloke who relies so much on heart and desire, setbacks do much more than mere pain. Who would even see that debacle coming to him? Letting 4 sixes off in the last over of the 2016 World Cup finals nearly meant the end of his career. The bar fight in 2017 ostensibly rubbed salt in the wound. Shell-shocked, he was losing realms of the game, losing his much-loved dad, having had a horrifying time the next couple of years.
Ahh grisly cold & unnerving for the loved ones to see Stokes the way he is. His struggles on the face of it hit hard, as explicit as a sinusoidal wave narrating the downfalls and the panic attacks he had to go through.
Setbacks are your biggest teacher as I would say it often. Wherein the pandemonium sets in, the sparks of genius are lit again. Equally evident is the distinct shift in his perception to becoming more calmer in approach. To thrive, a leader who leads by example must sometimes take a step back and match the intensity level of his team. All he needed was a break, & profitably that sabbatical had given him the room to re-engineer his approach to the game.
It was Stokes who produced the miracle innings, taking the cricketing world by storm, when England won the 50-over silverware in 2019. It was the same bloke, smashing a much-needed ton and fittingly leading his home to the infamous victory at the Leeds in the 2019 Ashes. Time and again, he engraved his place in the cricketing folklore again, with his unbeaten half-ton in the same finals at Melbourne, redeeming what he lost at Eden Gardens.
Time comes to the way, and so do the glorifying nights. It’s always the darkest before dawn. Win people, win hearts. This tale is as new as time — breaking my hiatus & back to writing!
