England’s talisman must show contrition before starting afresh
All-rounder made the wrong impression with his theatrical arrival to Trent Bridge yesterday
The black military-style Mercedes that carried Ben Stokes into a side entrance at Trent Bridge came to rest next to a poster that read: “Great things happen here.” That slogan is certainly true of Nottinghamshire’s home ground, where Stokes rejoins an England team already 2-0 up in the Test series against India. But what “great things” might mean for the all-rounder found not guilty this week of affray is not clear, beyond a century with the bat and a five-for with the ball. A less theatrical arrival at Trent Bridge would have been a good start.
At 12.30pm, the boxlike Mercedes-amg G63 swept through the gates and turned left along the back of the Smith Cooper stand while security men in green blazers rushed to form a cordon to stop television crews closing in. “Stay back,” they warned, and: “That’s as far as you’re going.” They did their best to sound fierce, but Nottingham is a friendly town, and they lacked real menace.
Thirty metres away, Stokes pulled his heavy kit-bag from the luxury motor and headed through a tunnel in the stand – straight into an alley of photographers. Here, reconnaissance let him down. So everyone had their pictures after all. In the Trent Bridge pavilion, Jonny Bairstow stuck his head out of an upstairs window to see how the grand arrival was going.
Stokes was back. Not guilty, not too drained to play in this third Specsavers Test, and not especially inclined to think a low-key return – in a Fiat Uno, say – might be the best idea. The locals treated him the same as every other England player, crowding him for autographs and snaps as he descended the steps of the pavilion. As India’s head coach, Ravi Shastri, observed, Stokes had been cleared in a court of law. “So what’s the problem?” Shastri asked.
The last time we saw Stokes, he was standing behind his solicitor in Bristol, listening to a statement read out in his name. That declaration, it could be argued, fell short of full contrition, which is why so much attention fell in Nottingham on whether he had anything to apologise for, to the England team and coaching staff.
As Stokes made his way to the changing room, Trevor Bayliss, the England coach, was preparing for a media conference that must have taken him back to last summer’s Ashes Tour, when he was grilled on Bairstow’s phantom butt on Cameron Bancroft and Ben Duckett pouring beer over James Anderson, among other things.
All this after Stokes, the vicecaptain, had been left out of the Ashes tour following the rumble outside Bristol’s Mbargo nightclub in September. Stokes called his book Firestarter. In red-ball cricket, Bayliss has been the firefighter. But the England coach is adamant a change has come.
“Since a couple of small indiscretions in Australia, I think the players have finally woken up,” Bayliss said. England’s refuelling in Australia conspired with a heavy 4-0 defeat to create a miserable atmosphere around the Test side.
The Stokes trial was a whole other level: criminal proceedings, with possible imprisonment, and graphic, viral images of how risky it is for international stars to be hanging around outside nightclubs at 2.30am in mid-series.
In the meantime, England have starred in a magnificent Edgbaston Test and bowled India dizzy at Lord’s in conditions designed by the god of swing. Trent Bridge is an opportunity to complete a series victory and put 11 months of turmoil if not to bed, then on the sofa for a siesta.
With a cricket discipline hearing on Stokes and Alex Hales pending, the shadow will persist.
For England’s players, the circus of Stokes’s return came with the knowledge that one of them may lose out when the team is picked. The “well-being” of Stokes, as Bayliss called it, is likely to take precedence over loyalty to the team who won at Lord’s.
Stokes has the talent to justify a change. But many feel he should have been made to wait, if only out of fairness to Chris Woakes, Sam Curran and Co. Stokes has missed seven of England’s past 11 Tests, and created a ruinous hullabaloo around the Test team by brawling on the streets of Bristol at the end of a night out that points to an alarming failure of professionalism. A failure preceded by lockerpunching episodes and a night in a cell in Cumbria.
Spectators in Nottingham will be sick of all this and will cheer Stokes back into combat in part because they want to move the action on, to victories and excitement. The kind of talent Stokes possesses has a special currency in cricket; it smites opponents and transforms games. Rare is the cricketer who can thrill the mob equally with bat and ball and intimidate even the most implacable foe.
This is what Trent Bridge wants, what English cricket craves; but the broader view of him will remain complicated until people feel he has understood the connection between actions and the consequences that are borne by others. If he does, great things could still happen here.