When Ben Stokes missed the 2017-18 Ashes tour, in the aftermath of the fracas in Bristol, it seemed inconceivable that he could ever captain England. Set against the frustration and regret at leaving his teammates to contend with an Ashes tour without him, you suspect that losing the vice-captaincy barely figured among Stokes’s disappointments.

Stokes has never been a cricketer who has gravitated to the captaincy. At Durham academy, Stokes’s leadership experience was limited to two games against Scotland U19s. Even at Cockermouth Cricket Club, his local club after moving to England from New Zealand aged 12, Stokes did not captain.

“He didn’t really have a desire to want to be,” Jon Gibson, Stokes’ coach at Cockermouth, previously told Telegraph Sport. Yet there were still inklings of Stokes’s cricketing acumen. “He thought a lot about his own tactics, which was to play attacking cricket and to make sure that you were challenging the opposition.”

Such qualities, combined with his integral worth to the side and closeness to Joe Root, led to Stokes being elevated to the England vice-captaincy in 2017. Stokes’s tenure lasted just seven games before the Bristol affair.

The Stokes who returned to England in 2018 was a subtly different incarnation to earlier. He had always been among the fittest members of the side, but his punishing workouts after official training have taken that to a new level: Stokes’s recorded running speeds have long ranked among the very top of the England squad. His diet has become healthier, working with the team nutritionist Emma Gardner. For England, the main concern about Stokes’s fitness has been whether he pushes himself too hard and isn’t honest about when he needs a break.

The new Stokes also plays differently, with a little more restraint. Bristol came at the halfway stage of Stokes’s career so far: he played 39 Tests before and has played 40 after. Before Bristol, Stokes had a batting strike rate of 64 in Tests; when he returned in 2018, his strike rate fell to 48. All told, his strike rate is 52 since 2018, still a fall of 12 compared to the first age of Stokes the Test cricketer.

Before the 2019 Ashes, Stokes was reinstated as Test vice-captain. It was a reward not just for his phenomenal World Cup campaign, but also how he had embraced his broader responsibilities to the side since his return 18 months earlier.