ASHES TO BASHES

Stokes’ dream year becomes a nightmare with a late-night bar brawl leaving his Australian tour hopes in jeopardy and English cricket with a serious problem

ENGLISH cricket was left in disarray last night with their most valuable and marketable player using his right hand for something far worse than batting or bowling.

And not for the first time. Ben Stokes is sweating on the results of an X-ray on his right hand used in a late-night fight in Bristol that has put a 27-year-old man in hospital. In 2014 he used the same hand to punch a locker that resulted in him fracturing his wrist and missing the World T20. This time it could be the Ashes that he misses, which would turn what had been a golden year for the all-rounder into a horror one. He has not yet been charged with an offence, but until police have concluded their investigations, the possibility of it happening remains. It would be an astonishing turnaround for Stokes who has been remarkable on the field for every team he has played for in 2017.

He is the dominant figure in every format, scoring Test, one-day and T20 hundreds within weeks of each other in the first half of the year, not to mention his bowling exploits that saw him take 6-22 at Lord’s this month.

He was the most expensive nonIndian player to be signed in the Indian Premier League when he joined the Pune Supergiant, and went on to be the player of the tournament.

Those performances sent him higher into the stratosphere of international sports stars who are paid handsomely for their work and revered by the fans who pay for subscriptions and tickets to watch them.

But with £1.7million contracts come great scrutiny and responsibility and this is where questions will be asked of Stokes and the ECB.

Even if Stokes is found to have acted in self-defence and not charged, why were he and Alex Hales (below, left) visiting the nightclubs of Bristol in the early hours in the middle of a one-day series? They thought nothing of joining the party-goers of ‘freshers week’ when on international duty which calls into question the judgement of senior players.

And it is not as though Stokes hasn’t had warnings before.

As a young player he was sent home from a tour for too many late nights with team-mate Matt Coles.

There have been stories of close shaves on nights out which have not developed further. So this episode cannot be described as a bolt from the blue. The game has been expecting it. Stokes is a father of two and is set to marry before the tour to Australia with his mum and Kiwi prison officer dad flying over for the nuptials.

With just two games left at the end of a gruelling season, the bust-up also calls into question the judgement of senior management too who have yet to find a balance between leaving the players to their own devices and protecting their greatest assets.

Stokes’ value to the ECB and the English game is arguably greater than any player before him. He bats, bowls and fields at 100mph and with a World Cup on home soil in 2019 and a new T20 tournament launching in 2020, he is the player around which the ECB would have hoped to build.

But as with great rock and roll allrounders before him like Sir Ian Botham (left, above) and Freddie Flintoff (left, below) there can be a price to pay. All three revelled in the limelight, but had issues when relieving pressure off the field.

Often the release valve is found in a bar, but that is when the support and the protection of your asset is needed most.

Andrew Strauss is in a position of power and must work with Stokes to avoid more incidents like this one.

Stokes must take responsibility for his actions, but Strauss has a vital role to play in how he deals with him. It should not be the case that incidents like these are inevitable for fast-playing and fastliving superstar cricketers.