The Zen of Ben

The Zen of Ben is a vivid portrait of England’s Test captain Ben Stokes and an exploration of Bazball and the joyful, shape-shifting game of cricket itself. Both Stokes and this new cricketing philosophy have been widely misunderstood, reduced to clichés and easy headlines – much like Zen itself. A person or a space exhibiting certain qualities – cool, spare, calm, chilled, stylishly other-worldly – readily attracts the Zen label. But it means a lot more (or a lot less) than this. Stokes’s life and career have been intense, unpredictable and boundary-breaking. The reimagining of English Test cricket has been equally transgressive and surprising. Together they mirror the strange, playful wisdom of Zen stories: out on the edge, deliberately incomprehensible, joyful, apparently crazy. With accounts of the 2025 India Tests and the latest Ashes, the book explores what Zen and Ben reveal about each other – and asks what it means to live without fear of failure, to let go of our seriousness, and to be just a little more playful.