It's part why I'm surprised England are being made favourites. Sure they have home advantage, but this format is as dangerous as the World Cup (2007 I believe) where one bad day at the office can see the head to head against the team supposed to go through with them knock them out eg Pakistan and India then....
Lose any one match and you're vulnerable, if England lose either of their first two games then they'll face having to beat the aussies and even Bangladesh won't be a pushover.
I'm not so sure the other group is quite as clear cut, I mean I rate this group higher regardless who you consider top two in either group, whoever is deemed third best is better than say Pakistan whilst Bangladesh aren't as far behind Sri Lanka, if indeed they are, as some might think on face value - rankings or no. I think it speaks volumes that England are assessing how much of a part Stokes can play, if they didn't fear Bangladesh I'd suggest he would be "rested" but they know the balance of the side is hinging on being able to play him, Ali and even Woakes.
Without any of them England were beaten all too easily, not that Stokes has bowled a great deal in recent ODIs. I'll split his batting and bowling neatly into 5 spells of 11 ODIs, notice he hasn't always bowled but you do have to question if he's as capable of bowling a full role as he has been at times in the past..
Ben Stokes (ODIs)
Batting :
ODIs 01-11 : 7 inns, 108 runs @ 15.43 (HS 27, SR 81.20)
ODIs 12-22 : 11 inns, 168 runs @ 16.80 (HS 70, SR 74.34)
ODIs 23-33 : 10 inns, 226 runs @ 25.11 (HS 68, SR 105.61)
ODIs 34-44 : 10 inns, 384 runs @ 42.67 (HS 75, SR 106.08)
ODIs 45-55 : 11 inns, 484 runs @ 53.78 (HS 101, SR 112.56)
Stokes scored 101 twice in his last 11 innings, and if you take his last 22 innings he has scored two hundreds, seven fifties and four other scores between 40 and 50, totalling 909 runs @ 47.84 and an SR of 107.45. Perhaps the problem is his improvement in leaps and bounds, both the average and SR improving pretty steadily now after being initially very disappointing, is his bowling and in particular ability to bowl his allocation/at all
Bowling* :
ODIs 01-11 (5) : 49 overs, 7 wkts @ 40.57 (ER 5.80)
ODIs 12-22 (10) : 62 overs, 13 wkts @ 29.23 (ER 6.13)
ODIs 23-33 (11) : 65 overs, 12 wkts @ 36.00 (ER 6.65)
ODIs 34-44 (7) : 45.2 overs, 5 wkts @ 49.60 (ER 5.47)
ODIs 45-55 (11) : 70 overs, 10 wkts @ 42.70 (ER 6.10)
*number of innings he bowled in brackets after the ODI spell
Stokes has bowled more overs in his last 11 ODIs than any other split of overs, but in his first 11 ODIs he may have only bowled 49 overs but bowled 9-10 overs in each of the five in which he did bowl. If you split the ODIs into 11 and just cite how many times he's bowled 8-10 overs within those 11 ODIs you see 5, 3, 4, 3 and 4 in order listed above. Take those out of maximum possible ie how many times he bowled, and convert to a percentage and it reads 100%, 30%, 36%, 43% and 36% . Obviously there isn't always a call for bowler to complete his allocation, especially with England fielding six bowling options a lot of the time, but if you consider the percentages where he's bowled X overs out of a possible 10 and you get 98%, 62%, 59%, 65% and 64% which suggests on average he's coming up 3-4 overs short
Sure that may sound reasonable given his injury problems, but for him to be the all-round weapon he has the potential to be surely you'd want him bowling as much as possible and maybe his figures would read better if he didn't play so often but when he did was fit to bowl a lot of very good, quick, aggressive and hopefully productive overs. For an all-rounder of his ability the number of wickets he's picked up recently is very disappointing, Whilst many make a lot of ER, anything around 5.75-6.25 is about par for the course with totals hitting 300 as much as they do, but wicket taking is what wins ODIs a lot if not all of the time.
