The physique is as lean as it ever has been. The tattoos now stretch across a sleeker canvas. The cheekbones protrude a little more. Only the beard looks burdened with extra heft. Blow the dust off the memes – Ben Stokes looks more like Vincent van Gogh than ever before.

A cricketer’s appearance rarely, if ever, warrants analysis. But for one to look like they’ve dropped from heavyweight to middleweight status just over 50 days from a serious knee operation is cause for some consideration.

And it was a serious knee operation, by the way. For so long, Stokes had kept the state of his left knee as quiet as possible while his laboured movements and inability to fulfil bowling duties as an allrounder screamed the truth with every grimace. That included downplaying the surgery eventually administered by specialist Dr Andy Williams at the private Cromwell Hospital in southwest London at the end of November.

“It was a bit more than a ‘clear out’ as well,” Stokes revealed on Tuesday afternoon in Hyderabad, having leant on that description in the months leading up to the procedure. A bone spur was removed, while the meniscus was reinforced with stitches.

The reluctance to go under the knife came from an honest place. A sense of duty to England and, ultimately, trepidation. “Surgery is always the last option,” he said. “Surgeries can go very well, but they can also sometimes not go too well, and set people back even further, and potentially even end careers.”

It was fear that motivated Stokes to strip down to a physique head coach Brendon McCullum likened to a greyhound earlier this week. Once England’s ODI World Cup had ended prematurely at the group stages, Stokes set about a pre-op routine to shed mass. “Because obviously, the less weight you’re carrying, the less weight you’ve got going through your knee and, actually, the quicker your recovery is,” he explained. An England spokesperson posited Stokes has lost 8-10kg. That has been facilitated by lifestyle changes, such as cutting alcohol, and a whole lot of hard graft.

The logic proved sound. Following the operation, what began as weekly assessments with ECB medical staff morphed into once every two- or three-day appointments, given the acceleration of his recovery.

Days spent in the gym over Christmas and New Year were as much to bring the knee up to scratch as “fixing” the kinks in the rest of the body, which had previously been overburdened by overcompensating for the dodgy joint. All of which led neatly into the two-week training camp in the UAE before touching down in India.

“Once we got to Abu Dhabi it was a good time to be pressing things on a bit, and start pushing myself,” explained Stokes. “Seeing how I was reacting, how I was waking up each day, how I was getting through long hard sessions, three or four different things through the day.”

There were frustrating moments, too, particularly when it came to the actual cricket. Adjustments he made over the last couple of years to cover for his knee when batting, for instance, needed to be undone in the nets and sessions out in the middle.

“Subconsciously, I was sort of doing what I was doing before I had it [the operation] just because it’s almost like muscle memory to maybe not get into certain positions. But the more and more I batted, the more I found, actually, it’s way more comfortable now. I can do it. You know, it’s just come through training more and more.”

This has carried over into India, ahead of the first Test which begins on Thursday.

“I sort of don’t think about it, if that makes sense? And getting into this period before the game starts, you’re thinking about the game whereas the first couple of nets I had I was more like testing the waters, maybe not committing myself as much as I would do in a game.

“But that all comes from coming back from the surgery. Just testing the waters to see how everything is reacting and obviously now my mind is focused on the game. So now I don’t have those thoughts in my mind.”

By all accounts, Stokes is ahead of schedule and expects to play all five Tests. And on the cusp of his first India tour as captain, a man whose leadership involves deflecting praise onto others allowed himself a moment of pride.