Until recently, the idea that England could win the World Cup without a rip-roaring contribution from Ben Stokes would have been laughed out of town. He’s the team’s heartbeat, right? Their life and soul. Their very basis for negotiation.

But strange things are happening to Stokes’s 50-over game, and – with the World Cup less than a fortnight away – they are happening at precisely the wrong moment. Simultaneously, Stokes is in danger of becoming a less brutal batsman and a less influential bowler. There’s peaking for the big stage – and there’s whatever Stokes is doing.

These are the numbers of a bits-and-pieces cricketer, not a fully fledged all-rounder who balances the side. More pertinently, they are not the numbers of a firing-on-all-cylinders Ben Stokes.

The point of all this is not to belittle a player who went through hell before and during his trial for affray, and then had to await the verdict of the Cricket Discipline Commission before he could properly get on with his career. The 2017/18 Ashes might have been a high point. Instead, it will go down as his greatest what-if. Less robust cricketers would have crumbled altogether.

But we should be able to make a gentle plea: can England please have back the Stokes who is capable of hitting his first ball for six, and of steaming in at 90mph, his face puce with rage at the idea that the bloke at the other end wishes him ill?

It was instructive to hear Mark Wood, ahead of the fourth ODI against Pakistan at Trent Bridge, nominate Stokes and Steven Finn as the fastest England bowlers he had played with – at least until Jofra Archer came along.

Maybe the World Cup will bring the best out of Stokes, restoring his reputation as a man for the big occasion. It just feels slightly counter-intuitive, unsettling even, that we need to raise the issue at all.