When Ben Stokes hit a young left-arm spinner for five sixes in one over I was alarmed that – at least on the face of it – there did not seem to be much support from his team.

The apparent lack of support for Worcestershire's Josh Baker in terms of advice on how to change his approach tells us all we need to know about the state of County cricket.

Obviously, the Ben Stokes cheerleaders will be delighted to see him back in form as the England captain, but it is important not to get carried away.

The new England Test coach, New Zealand's Brendon McCullum, and Stokes are cut from the same cloth and they will always look to play cricket on the front foot.

We saw Stokes try the same approach that blew Baker away when he came up against Luke Hollman of Middlesex. But, he faced a more astute captain in the shape of Peter Handscomb and he was caught in the deep for 15.

Looking ahead, it is important that Stokes gives due respect to New Zealand spinner, Ajax Patel, in the remainder of the Test series against New Zealand this summer.

Importantly, the Kiwi captain, Kane Williamson, is a very intelligent cricketer. He will play with Stokes' ego and get him to play a rush shot as he did against Hollman.

Patel has been in fine form with the ball since arriving in the UK. And the fact that he is only the third bowler to take 10 wickets in a Test match will play heavily on the mind of any batsman.

I watched Patel bowl at Chelmsford recently. He bowled with intelligence and guile, and he is clearly a very canny operator.

England need to find its own match-winning spinner, which has seen McCullum already having talks with Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid.

That would probably mean discarding Somerset's Jack Leach, who has been in fine form, not least in his recent match-winning display v Gloucestershire. He claimed 5/49 in the first innings and 3/41 in the second - ending up with match figures of 8/90.

In fact, the selection decision appears to have already been decided by the fact Leach does not seem to have recovered from the concussion he suffered in the first Test at Lords.

If we are to make a serious attempt at improving standards in red ball cricket, I tend to side with the views of Kevin Pietersen who favours the introduction of a competitive franchise system.

This is something Sir Andrew Strauss will need to give serious thought to with a new expert panel on the future of the game, which includes Sir Dave Brailsford, the former performance director of British Cycling, and Dan Ashworth, the former director of elite development at the FA.