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.