Stokes facing Ashes ban over brawl in street
All-rounder and Hales suspended indefinitely Vice-captain also in video ‘mimicking disabled boy’
The England and Wales Cricket Board took the first step to banning vice-captain Ben Stokes from the Ashes tour when it suspended him and Alex Hales indefinitely yesterday.
Both remain on full pay pending the ECB’S own disciplinary process and the separate police investigation but, as things stand, Stokes will not be going to Australia after footage emerged of the street brawl that led to his arrest on the suspicion of causing actual bodily harm.
Stokes has been requested to attend a Bristol police station over the next week to be interviewed again by detectives.
Hales will be interviewed separately under caution. Neither has been charged. Sources have indi- cated police are now treating the incident as affray.
There are those at the ECB who would still like to see Stokes in Australia given his importance to the team but events spiralled out of the board’s control when the film of him knocking a man to the ground was published on Wednesday.
To add further embarrassment to Stokes and the ECB, a video also emerged yesterday afternoon of Stokes mimicking the 15-year-old disabled son of the television personality and model Katie Price.
It is inconceivable Stokes will remain as England’s Test vice-captain and he could face a lengthy ban from the ECB after Andrew Strauss, the team’s director of cricket, referred the case to an independent cricket disciplinary commission after viewing the footage of the fight.
The ECB did not use the word suspension in the statement it issued on Wednesday and with only one cricket match left in the season – today’s one-day international at the Ageas Bowl – there is hardly anything to ban them from anyway, but it buys the ECB time while it decides its next move and wait for developments with the police investigation.
The footage of the brawl stunned the board and accelerated the disciplinary process following talks between the most senior members of the ECB hierarchy on Wednesday morning, including Strauss, Tom Harrison, the chief executive, and chairman Colin Graves.
The England team leave for Australia on Oct 28 and rules concerning nights out will be tightened. Extra security will be provided for the players and, while a formal curfew is unlikely, there will be stricter guidelines around where they can go and who they inform of their whereabouts.
Stokes is a vital member of the team, irreplaceable on the field both for the balance he gives the side as an all-rounder and as a leader others rally behind. But there can be no question he has brought the game into disrepute on two levels. Aside from the negative headlines and criminal investigation, on a basic cricketing level he has badly damaged the team’s preparations for an
team’s preparations for an Ashes series by breaking the little finger in his right hand during a street fight at 2.35am and is likely to miss the three warm-up matches before the first Test.
It is understood that Stokes (below) is likely to be given angermanagement treatment and lifestyle advice after England head coach, Trevor Bayliss, labelled the players “very unprofessional” for being out until the early hours of the morning halfway through a one-day series against West Indies.
Later Bayliss, speaking after the win over West Indies at the Oval on Wednesday, and before the emergence of video footage of the fight, described the fallout from Stokes incident as one of the greatest challenges of his career.
“It’s right up there – probably in the top two I would have thought,” he said. “It’s very difficult for everyone involved, something that obviously we didn’t want to go through and hope that we don’t go through again.” To put that into context, Bayliss was shot at by terrorists while coaching the Sri Lanka team in 2009. Stokes has flourished as an all-rounder under Bayliss who inherited the team shortly after he had been left out of England’s World Cup squad in 2015. Since then he has matured into one of the best cricketers in the world earning more than £1million playing in the IPL.
But that has all been put on hold since the footage of the fight was published on Wednesday evening. Sources have indicated that Stokes was reacting to homophobic taunts levelled at two men by another group of individuals. One man, seemingly armed with a bottle, attempts to swing at Hales but does not make contact.
A melee ensues in which Stokes is grappling with two men on the floor. A man who looks like Hales appears to stamp and kick at an individual on the ground before running off.
He then appears to return and kick out twice more before the fight moves into the middle of the road where Stokes knocks a man to the ground before aiming a slap at another. Hales can be heard asking him to stop.
Most of the ECB’S regulations deal with on-field behaviour but under article 3.3 of its code it states: “No participant may conduct themselves in a manner or do any act or omission at any time which may be prejudicial to the interests of cricket or which may bring the ECB, the game of cricket or any cricketer or group of Cricketers into disrepute.”
The ECB’S independent cricket disciplinary commission will be chaired by Tim O’gorman, a former Derbyshire cricketer now a lawyer and will comprise of three members in total.