I witnessed Josh Baker’s battle with Ben Stokes and saw his spirit shine through

Baker has been fondly remembered around the counties since his death earlier this week – PA/David Davies

All county teams wore black armbands when they took to the field on Friday, as a tribute to Josh Baker, Worcestershire’s left-arm spinner, who died distressingly suddenly aged 20. English cricket needs all the spinners it can find, and Baker was one of the most promising, and full of spirit too.

Two summers ago I watched this spirit of Baker’s respond at Worcester to perhaps the biggest on-field challenge that cricket could throw up: Ben Stokes on the rampage. Stokes had just been made England’s Test captain. In his first innings for Durham after his appointment, Stokes was intent on a mission statement: no more pussy-footing by England, after 17 Tests with a single win, his players were going to attack.

Stokes played himself in while reaching 30 before turning his attention to Worcestershire’s seamers. The sixes began to soar. In all, he would smite 17 sixes, the most in any innings in the County Championship from the dawn of time to this day.

Baker was brought on by Worcestershire’s captain, Brett D’Oliveira, at the Diglis end. When he was bowling to the left-handed Stokes, the boundary on the leg-side – where the Graeme Hick pavilion and the Ladies Pavilion stand – did not seem to be short, but Stokes rapidly made it appear so.

Bending his back knee, as he could in those days, Stokes “got under the ball” and levered it over the leg-side, five times in a row. It would have been shattering for any bowler, all the more so for one who had recently been representing England Under-19s.

Yet Baker did not hesitate in his run-up or delivery stride, or get rid of the sixth ball of his over meekly. He conferred long with his captain – not that there was much field-placing to be done as every Worcestershire fielder was guarding the boundaries – then fired a ball at the England captain’s legs.

It was a triumph of a kind. Stokes could not quite get under this ball and hit it cleanly. It still whistled past the umpire and bowler, and whistled past the sightscreen too, but on the bounce. If every ball in a cricket match is a battle, the honours were shared on this occasion. Stokes could not hit it for six to give Baker a permanent place in the records as the conceder of six sixes in an over. It went for only four, and 34 off the over.

It was cricket at its best when Stokes messaged Baker after this game: he said he would have tried to take any spinner down, even – or especially – Nathan Lyon. Baker replied to the effect that he was still very much up for future challenges.

Only a fortnight ago I saw Baker playing for Worcestershire at Kidderminster. He was fielding at extra-cover and the ball was pushed towards him as a Somerset batsman played forward to a seamer. Yet the ball eluded his hands, and tapped him on the ankles, and trickled behind Baker for a single. It made one realise how young he still was, only 20, with his whole career to come; and for any 20 year-old nowadays, who is not obsessive, it may not be easy to concentrate all day long.

When a ball was hit to his left a couple of minutes later, Baker was alert and swift, flinging the ball back to his wicketkeeper. He was reassuring his team-mates that he was back in business, that he was “working hard” as they say nowadays when playing cricket.

And Baker could have been forgiven for day-dreaming when he misfielded. It might only take one injury to Tom Hartley, England’s left-arm spinner in India, for him, Josh, to be on England’s plane to Pakistan for the Test series this autumn. Stranger things are happening in English cricket.

It is poignant, as I write at the Taunton ground, that another left-arm spinner was skippering Somerset seconds in the game during which Baker died. Jack Leach has endured all sorts of injuries and illnesses, and nearly died on an England tour of New Zealand when sepsis was added to his Crohn’s disease. Long may he live to tell his tale.

It is even more poignant that Baker died at the start of a cricket season. Sir Neville Cardus phrased it better than anyone when another left-arm spinner, Yorkshire and England’s Roy Kilner, died one April of the enteric fever contracted when he was coaching in India the previous winter.

“It is sad for a cricketer to die in the fullness of life, but sadder still when a cricketer passes away at the spring of the year. Players of the game will everywhere be sad indeed at the news of Roy Kilner’s death, just as the call of a new season is gladdening their ears.”

Kilner was 37 at the time. Baker was only 20, still so far from the fullness of life.

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