Ben Stokes is retiring from international cricket.
That was the shock news that broke at 3.25pm on day four of England’s third Test against New Zealand with the captain in the middle of a lengthy bowling spell.
As news filtered around Trent Bridge, Stokes upped his pace by a further four miles per hour and took the wicket of New Zealand’s Zak Foulkes with the very next ball.
Questions about why Stokes had made that decision had to wait as England were set 373 runs to win the game and Stokes himself strode out to opening the batting. He made 30 runs in a swashbuckling and chaotic innings as the day’s play ended with his team 103-4 needing 270 runs with six wickets left.
As expected, Stokes came out to talk to the media after stumps and explained that he had been thinking about retirement since the beginning of the test series and perhaps further back.
“It’s been an interesting, not only four or five weeks but six months. There’s all types of emotions when this day comes. There’s relief, there’s happiness, there’s excitement, there’s sadness, there’s everything that you go through. All those words I think sums it up pretty well,” Stokes revealed.
“It’s been really tough, I’m sure a lot of, not necessarily players but captains can understand it. Somebody I’ve spoken to quite a lot around this kind of stuff is Joe [Root] and he gets it. He understands it.”
Looking back on his decision to retire from international cricket, Stokes explained that he’d been feeling off since the end of the Ashes series in Australia last winter before admitting to his wife that he didn’t think he had ‘any fight left in me’.
“Another thing I had over the last five or six weeks was it felt like another thing I had to try and overcome. I felt like I’ve been pretty good throughout my career and overcoming on field disappointment, off field disappointment and the emotional side of this since Australia… the way I said it to my wife was ‘actually I don’t think I have any fight left in me’,” he admitted.
“It’s brutal what we do, physically, mentally and even the stuff away from it. What you have to put in, the hard work, even that is getting tiring these days. At 35, I feel I’ve got to do so much physical work to keep myself doing what I do out there, do I have that fight in me to keep doing that because of what I know it takes to go out there and play for my country?
“There are so many things that have made me lean into this decision, the emotional side and the mental side.”
Stokes also talked about his love for cricket and how being England captain was the ‘best thing’ he was ever asked to do. He added that the week at Lords tested him both mentally and physically and that he knew he was edging closer to retirement.
“It’s the best thing that I’ve ever been asked to do which is captain this team and captain this country and I’ll never begrudge any moment where I’ve captained and walked the team out,” Stokes continued.
“It’s simply the greatest honour you could ever put on your shoulders as a player. But there’s another side to it all that people don’t see, people don’t understand and only people close to those people can see it. My family, in particular my wife, can see what you go through emotionally and as good as it is, there are bits were it does get you and it does drain you and it gets you in a negative way. Overall, it’s been four and a half years, I’ve loved every single minute of it.
“The whole Lords test was something that I guess brought back some kind of negative feelings about where I was in my career. I’d worked so hard from getting back home to try and make things right. That’s what I thought I was doing, I put so much time and effort into it that maybe I burned myself out. When I got to that week at Lords it was a very interesting and strange feeling to go into that game. I gave myself as much time and spoke to as many people as I could do in the process of this whole thing that everyone goes through and I tried, I gave myself every opportunity to potentially think it was maybe a blip or something wasn’t quite right.
“Everyone I’ve spoken to about the day it happens said ‘it kicks you straight in the face’. I thought a few weeks ago that it did but then it was when I was putting my pads on yesterday getting ready to go out there that was the last nail in the coffin.
“I’ve been through some rocky times with having to push myself through or doing something because it’s the right thing to do. It mind sound quite selfish but this decision is genuinely the best thing for me right now, whether it means it’s the best thing for the team going forward I hope so but it comes down to what I think is going to allow me to still love this game that I’ve played since I was a kid and has given me a career.”
