Going back to your earlier comment Frank...Stokes is inconsistent and thereforr not sure he merits a place in the top 5 but he can be a match winner, as seen in the summer when he got Kohli out when they were looking like India were going to win. There should be room for a player like him in the team.
What is t his fault is the lack of top quality too order batsman. Same for Moeen really. We’re lucky to have such a vast number of very good multi talented cricketers and at the moment can justifiably play most of them, but it always means one or two might be too high in the order. Until we have better options though I think we just have to accept that this is a talented but flawed side who will win more than they lose at home and vice versa away.
I think my issue with that is that I do think there are a few options to try coming through in the county game, but they keep picking the wrong ones. I think a minimum of the top 4 should all be specialist bats, and of the others, only Bairstow (and maybe Foakes) is good enough to bat 5, which leaves, if we have Anderson/Broad(or another bowler)/A Spinner at 9-11 (Rashid/Leach/Parkinson), 6-8 left over for Ali/Woakes/Stokes/Buttler/Foakes without dropping a specialist bat or bowl.
If you look back at all the great teams through the ages, the most common blue print would be 5 specialist bats, a WK, 4 specialist bowlers, and an all rounder. By shoe horning Stokes/Ali (and sometimes Woakes), as well as picking 2-3 Wickies (of which YJB is the best bat, but not good enough as a specialist to bat higher than 5), we end up having too many bowling, and not enough batting.
Regarding our all round options, over the past 2/3 years (a good judge of their performances using averages):
| Player | Matches | Innings | Not Outs | Runs | Average | Overs | Runs | Wickets | Average | SR |
| Stokes - 2 Years | 15 | 27 | 0 | 884 | 32.74 | 304.5 | 1001 | 33 | 30.33 | 55.4 |
| Stokes - 3 Years | 27 | 48 | 1 | 1788 | 38.04 | 584.1 | 1853 | 66 | 28.08 | 53.1 |
| Woakes - 2 Years | 9 | 15 | 2 | 421 | 32.38 | 308.2 | 964 | 24 | 40.17 | 77.1 |
| Woakes - 3 Years | 21 | 36 | 7 | 914 | 31.52 | 647.4 | 2006 | 65 | 30.86 | 59.8 |
| Ali - 2 Years | 16 | 28 | 1 | 687 | 25.44 | 454.4 | 1525 | 47 | 32.45 | 58 |
| Ali - 3 Years | 33 | 57 | 7 | 1765 | 35.3 | 986.4 | 3487 | 84 | 41.51 | 70.5 |
So what this shows, is, that last 2 years Stokes average has gone downhill in both batting (going from 38 over the past 3 years to 32.7 over past 2 years), AND bowling (average gone up from 28 to 30.33), showing he has not been as effective in either discipline;
Ali's batting has gone downhill massively (averages 25 over past 2 years, compared to 35.3 before), but has got better (but is still not great) with bowling (average going down from a "worst regular bowler in world" level of 41.5 to a respectable 32.5)
And Woakes has had a catastrophic, injury hit 2 years after a very good (as good as, if not better, to stokes/ali in 2016), hardly playing and bowling atrociously in the meantime.
