Ah cool, nice one
I definitely remember him batting at 5 and 4 and even at those positions, sometimes he'd be in to bat early due to a collapse. Sort of like now. Ben Stokes in, 13th over? Not right...
I don't think he should be playing anyway, after his off-field antics, but that's a whole different story. Still, it goes some way to demonstrate just how the ECB and the selectors operate these days. He brawls in the street but still has a place in the team. That's not right.
Oh definitely, I'm not saying that if he bats at 4 he won't ever face the new ball, but it should reduce the likelihood of him doing so and in turn improve his average.
The issue is that we seem to breed great number 6s at the moment (Stokes, Bairstow, Buttler, even arguably Moeen and Vince) but nothing else. Long term, I think we'd be best off if we bring youngsters (eg Pope and Habeeb) into the Test team now and let them stick it out, and develop into good Test top order batsmen, rather than being ruined by playing one day and T20 cricket. We should have done the same with Malan years ago, his talent was obvious. We'd weaken the team (albeit not substantially) in the short term, but long term we'd have some proper openers and 3s and 4s rather than guys who come from playing one day cricket and aggressively at 6 in the County Championship, to having to adapt their game when facing a relatively new ball in Test cricket where they just need to survive for an hour or two.
On Stokes, I don't think you can write him off for life due to his misdemeanours, but I agree that he should have been banned by the ECB for a substantial (6-12 month) period. He made a big mistake and that deserves to be punished, but equally if he learns from it and becomes a better person then he also deserves to come back into the fold. To have effectively been let off the hook entirely by the ECB is ridiculous, though.
