THEY CALL HIM STOKESY AT SCHOOL COS HE’S A HARD LITTLE C* * T

LITTLE Tommy Vincent was happier than most when cricketer Ben Stokes was cleared of affray.

Because Tommy, just eight, IDOLISES the Durham and England all- rounder and wants “to be like him”.

But it isn’t 27- year- old Stokes’s ability with the bat and ball he so admires – it’s his handiness with his fists!

Mum Sharon grinned: “Our Tommy’s a proper little scrapper. Since that Ben Stokes business kicked off, the other kids have been calling him Stokesy, because he’s a hard little c** t and he looks a lot like him. I’m dead proud of the little f** ker.”

Tommy and his mum live in Cockermouth, the Cumbrian town where Stokes was brought up. TOUGH LOVE: Sharon says her Tommy wants to be like Stokes (

Sharon, said: “I said to our Tommy when he were right little, ‘ You’ve got to be hard when you live round here. There’s no way you can get on without fighting’.

“He took it on board, bless him. He was expelled from three primary schools by the time he was six and they put him in the special unit. But even there, with all the nipper psychos and that, he holds his own.

“And good thing about being in the special unit is that he gets taken to school for free.” Ironically, Tommy’s no cricket fan. Shaznay said: “Our Tommy says cricket’s for pooves.”

Meanwhile, Ben Stokes was recalled to England’s Test squad just hours after he was cleared last Tuesday.

The England and Wales Cricket Board announced an independent Cricket Discipline Commission investigation into the player and his teammate Alex Hales would resume.

After being acquitted, Stokes thanked his wife, family, friends and teammates for “unerring” support during “an 11- month ordeal” following a fracas outside a Bristol club last September.

Stokes accepted he had punched unconscious best friends Ryan Hale, 27, and Ryan Ali, 28.

He insisted he was acting in self- defence, or in the defence of others, when two gay men, William O’Connor and Kai Barry, suffered homophobic abuse.