Ben Stokes's 'main character energy' defined his career and his 'highly unusual' retirement

There have been plenty of cricketers who have embodied the concept of "main character energy", but few have done so more than Ben Stokes.

Main character energy, for those who don't know, describes someone who views their life as a movie, treating themselves as the sole protagonist while relegating everyone else to supporting roles.

"You often present to the world as if a camera is on you at all times," Dr Susan Albers of the Cleveland Clinic wrote.

"Having that perspective — that you are the centre of the story — naturally changes the way you present yourself to others and how you act in a public setting."

Nothing sums up Stokes's England career more, nor his stunning retirement.

Headingley's heroics in 2019, a home World Cup victory that same year, and countless other moments where Stokes has stepped up when England needed him.

But he carried that main character energy right to the end.

Indeed, what could be more befitting than taking a wicket just as the Trent Bridge crowd stands to applaud you as news of your impending international retirement breaks?

The England skipper, having already bowled 10 overs unchanged since lunch, saw the crowd stand to applaud him, a man who has done so much to endear himself to them in his career, as news broke across the stadium.

As that applause continued to ring around Trent Bridge, not 20 seconds after it was announced he would be stepping down, Stokes found the edge of a driving Zak Foulkes and had him caught at second slip by Harry Brook, his potential successor as captain.

As Graham Gooch once famously asked another of England's main characters, Ian Botham, "Who writes your scripts?"

It didn't end there.

Stokes somewhat inexplicably opened the batting for England in the fourth innings, bashing the ball about for 20 deliveries that earned him 30 runs before he was caught by Mitchell.

That left England 1-50, still 322 runs behind New Zealand and facing a Test and series defeat.

If it needs pointing out, carrying so much main character energy is not always a good thing.

Self-assurance and confidence are prerequisites for any athlete at the top level, and make no mistake, Stokes has operated at the top level as an all-rounder of supreme quality and durability for England over the past 15 years.

South African great Jacques Kallis is the only other man to have scored more than 7,000 Test runs and taken 250 Test wickets as an all-rounder.

But Stokes always felt like more than just numbers.

"It's not just the player — it's the persona," Michael Vaughan said of Stokes and the hole he leaves in England's team.

"He's got the winning mentality, and I have him as one of England's greatest when the pressure's on.

"Whenever England need something, he has always delivered."

That heady summer of 2019 illustrated that perfectly.

His single-handed wresting of victory at Headingley from the jaws of defeat to save the Ashes for England will never be forgotten.

His brilliant performances as England won the World Cup for the first time the month prior were just as valuable in cementing his legacy as the biggest of big-time players.

But the manner of Stokes's announcement gave a fist-to-the face reminder of how such star power can become a negative.

'Highly unusual' timing is off

"It might sound quite selfish but this decision is genuinely the best thing for me right now," Stokes told Sky Sports.

"I hope it's the best thing for the team going forward but I also hope it's what will allow me to keep loving this game that has given me so much."

Stokes said he thought a lot about retirement after the bungled Ashes campaign on these shores, when a skittish and ill-disciplined England were humiliated 4-1.

The strain on Stokes was clear for everyone to see during that series. Frustration with his teammates only as thinly disguised as the disappointment he had in his own performances, he averaged just 18.4 with the bat, passing 50 just twice, and took 15 wickets at 25.13.

"Being England captain is the greatest honour a player can be given and I do not take it for granted," Stokes wrote after the series, noting that the three months on tour had been "without a doubt the hardest period" of his captaincy.

"It has its highs and it has its lows, it makes you want to smile, it makes you want to cry. It completely and utterly consumes you and feels like it's the only thing in your life at times."

Stokes has taken time away from the game in the past to deal with mental health issues, and the stress that being so heavily scrutinised cannot be discounted.

But he also wrote in an Instagram post how much he "f****** loves" the sport.

It is that love he rekindled when playing for Durham after being stood down for England's second Test against New Zealand.

"Being back at Durham, when I wasn't playing in the second Test, I found a new lease of life for the game, but unfortunately I just couldn't get that feeling back this week," Stokes said.

When he put his pads back on in England colours in Nottingham, that feeling just wasn't there.

Stokes's decision to retire cannot be criticised. His mind is his own, it always has been, and his priority has to be to himself above all things.

The timing and manner of how it was announced, though? That is open to debate.

In the strangely uncomfortable ECB social media video, Stokes bizarrely requests that "all the taps on the arse, all the emotion, all that kind of stuff, please can we just wait for the end of this game?"

That video, shot from the side and giving the impression you've accidentally walked into a private function you have no right to be witness to, was then made public. In the middle of a game.

One can't request a degree of privacy if you're the one loudly demanding that privacy via the modern loudspeaker that is social media.

An England captain announcing their retirement in the middle of a match is unprecedented. BBC cricket doyen Jonathan Agnew described it as "highly unusual".

He told his teammates on the morning before play on day four. It was made public at 15:25.

Announcing his retirement to the world in the middle of a Test match that he and his team are well on their way to losing illustrates the biggest issue this England regime has had to handle: the cult of personality that led to the circumstances by which Stokes felt he could no longer continue in the first place.

The question now is who will follow him out the door?

Stokes said the events of the past two weeks, when he was made unavailable after an incident in a nightclub that he was later cleared of having anything to do with other than being present, played a small role in his decision.

But the entire reason Stokes was suspended was that England were under a self-imposed curfew.

That curfew was caused by the man many expect to step into Stokes's role as captain, Harry Brook, who had altercation with a bouncer in a nightclub in New Zealand before the Ashes started.

This England team was an ill-behaved rabble in Australia, throwing away a golden chance to win a series on Australian soil for the first time in a generation by falling prey to their own hubris.

Will anything change under Brook, especially if Brendon McCullum, who if nothing else has proven himself an enabler of England's extraordinary self-centredness, remains in charge?

England, if it loses what's turned into Stokes's valedictory Test against New Zealand on Monday, will have lost eight of its last 13 Test matches.

With the main character exiting stage left, one wonders how long it will be before things improve, or whether the supporting cast will step up.