Ben Stokes is highly unlikely to be included in England’s squad for the second Test against New Zealand after the 35-year-old asked for space and time to consider his long-term future amid the fallout from a nightclub incident in the early hours of Monday morning.
The England and Wales Cricket Board is determined to bring the latest furore surrounding the culture of the men’s Test team under control before the start of the Women’s World Cup on Friday, with a temporary end to Stokes’s time as captain expected to be confirmed when the squad is announced within the next 48 hours.
The ECB, the independent cricket regulator and Saracens rugby club are continuing their inquiries into Sunday night’s incident at a Chelsea nightclub allegedly involving Stokes, his teammate Gus Atkinson, a member of the ECB’s security team and the Saracens academy player Totoa Auvaa.
Those investigations are likely to take some time: the ECB hope theirs will conclude in a matter of weeks, but the cricket regulator’s probe into a comparable incident involving Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell and Josh Tongue at a nightclub in Wellington, New Zealand last November ended five months after the incident took place and nearly three months after it was first reported, while a Saracens spokesperson has refused to put a timescale on their review, saying only that it “will take as long as it takes”.
Meanwhile, further details emerged of the England team’s celebrations after their victory in the first Test on Sunday, with players drinking in their dressing room at Lord’s before moving in the evening to the White Horse pub in Parsons Green, where they met up with members of the Saracens squad.
After 11pm a number then moved on to the Rex Rooms nightclub in Chelsea, where a fight is understood to have broken out at around 1am, an hour after the curfew that was introduced for the England squad after the Ashes.
No other team members are believed to have been there at the time. Neither Stokes nor Atkinson are said to have been actively involved the fighting, and while a member of England’s security team was injured, the police were not called and there is no expectation that criminal charges will be filed.
A source at the ECB said the mood at the game’s governing body was one of “sadness and frustration”. After a winter that, beyond a humiliating defeat in the Ashes, included a number of embarrassing incidents that hinted at issues with the team culture and the potential abuse of alcohol, there was a feeling that a line had been drawn, the right messages had been relayed, and there was a readiness to move on.
As the England head coach, Brendon McCullum, put it in an interview before the first Test: “What I said [to the players] is: ‘Nothing good ever happens after midnight, and don’t do anything that lands on the front page of the papers.’ I kind of feel like if you live by those principles you can still have a good time without putting in jeopardy the very thing that you hold so dearly.’”
But at the very first opportunity England’s captain, perhaps their most high-profile and one of their most-experienced players, has allowed himself to be caught up in an episode that has embarrassed him and his employers.
Last year Stokes and Atkinson agreed two-year central contracts with the ECB which run until 30 September 2027, and though their terms have not been made public incidents of this nature may trigger clauses that would allow the governing body to terminate them should they choose to do so.
Lord’s has been handed an “unsatisfactory” pitch rating for the first Test between England and New Zealand after the hosts sealed a 115-run win inside four days of a rain-hit, bowler-dominated match.
The ground received one demerit point that will remain on its record for five years. Any venue accumulating six points over that period faces a one-year ban from hosting international matches.
“There was plenty of excessive seam movement throughout the Test and the ball also kept extremely low on several occasions,” match referee Andy Pycroft Crowe said in a statement from the International Cricket Council.
“The bounce was variable throughout as 16 wickets fell on the first day and 17 on the second. There was simply an over-balance in favour of ball against bat caused by the pitch.” Reuters
That is not being considered at this stage, and while investigating what they termed “a breach of team protocols” the governing body is also aware of their responsibilities to the two players. Atkinson is also unlikely to play in the second Test, though with their investigation ongoing this may be presented as an attempt to safeguard his mental health rather than as a formal suspension.
The former England captain David Gower said on Tuesday that Stokes’s future had to be “in severe doubt”. “One of the responsibilities as a captain is to set the right tone – if you’re leading, you have to set the right example,” he told the BBC. “They have to sort it out. If you’ve agreed to a curfew, you have to abide by it.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for Ben and most of the things he’s done as England captain. He has become – or, I probably have to use the past tense now, had become – a very important figure as a leader of that team. He will be mortified, I’m sure, to have put himself in this position.”
