WIFE STOOD BY HIM ALL WEEK AND
THERE was no punch of the air, no outburst of emotion. In fact, there was hardly any reaction at all. After an ordeal lasting nearly 11 months, and a trial that had gone into a seventh day, Ben Stokes gave little away as he learnt he had been cleared of affray. While wife Clare broke down in the gallery, and his agent became similarly emotional, Stokes leant forward in his chair, rested his forehead on the glass of the dock and shook his head with a sigh. Once Judge Peter Blair QC had risen for the final time, Stokes’s first action was not to run into the arms of his wife, or pat the back of his lawyer. Instead, he walked across the dock to shake the hand of co-defendant Ryan Ali. On leaving the dock, he went straight to shake the hands of prosecution barrister Nicholas Corsellis and investigating officer DC Adams. A short while later, he walked across the courtroom and placed a hand around the back of his wife as she wiped tears from her eyes. Were it not for the big smile Stokes flashed later, or the laughter that could be heard from the room where his team gathered after the verdict, it would have been almost impossible to discern his feelings. For when he walked out of court to hear his solicitor read a statement on his behalf, which maintained his innocence and contained no apology for his part in the incident last September, the same stony-faced expression had returned. For the majority of his seven days in court, Stokes wore the same inscrutable expression. There were fleeting moments, however, when he betrayed nerves, stress and exhaustion, in the way he sipped his water, puffed out his cheeks and fidgeted in his seat. The trial began inauspiciously for Stokes last Monday. Despite staying in a hotel less than 200 yards from the entrance to Bristol Crown Court, he made the odd choice to arrive in a silver minicab. Then he and his entourage received a police escort to their lunch venue. There was also an awkward game of musical chairs in the dock. In a rush to sit down on the first morning, Stokes settled directly next to co-defendant Ryan Hale, having failed to clock the 14 spare seats. Elbow to elbow, they listened to Mr Corsellis talk through, in painstaking detail, the injuries Stokes had supposedly inflicted on Hale and Ali,
and allegations Stokes had been homophobic towards two gay men. In the first break, Hale took the chance to move one seat along. After the next break, he moved another space further away. By the end of the trial — once Hale had been acquitted — there were four spaces between Stokes and Ali. Stokes showed no emotion still when Corsellis submitted an unsuccessful application to add ‘two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm’ to his indictment. And still nothing when his barrister failed to get the case thrown out on the grounds it did not constitute affray. Indeed, it was not until the fourth day, when the time came for Stokes’s evidence, that anyone could gauge how he was feeling. Shortly after 12.30pm he passed a smiling Clare in the gallery and took his place in the witness box. Stokes was asked to show his hand to the jury to highlight some lasting ‘cricketing injuries’. He did it sheepishly. Then he had to go through, drink by drink, how much alcohol he had consumed on the night in question. Here came perhaps the only inconsistency in his story, for the following day he had to admit he might also have had a few ‘Jagerbombs’ with his team-mates. He revealed his colleagues often tell him he has ‘s***’ tattoos and that he has the worst dress sense in the team. As if to prove the point, his white trainers, embellished with gold buckles, were presented to the court, prompting laughter from Stokes and his entourage. The mood was far darker in Friday’s cross-examination by Ali’s defence barrister Anna Midgley. For 15 minutes, he was accused of exaggerating his case to justify his violence and grilled as to why he had so little recollection of the evening. When the judge told him he was finished, Stokes puffed out his cheeks and flopped forwards. By Monday, he appeared to have relaxed into the environment. He took it upon himself to try to fix the fan in the dock and, returning after lunch, he sauntered in casually with Clare and chatted happily to the dock officer. Yet, when judgment day came, the tension had returned. In the seconds before the jury returned to deliver their verdicts, Stokes shuffled in his seat, pursed his lips and glanced up repeatedly at the press gallery. Yet even at the moment he discovered he was a free man, he succeeded in disguising his emotions. Only later would he concede he had been under ‘extreme stress’ throughout.