Ben Stokes’ state of mind has proved a bone of contention over these past dozen days of England exile. He’s either been a major cause for concern or Good Old Ben, depending on which dressing room the reflection has come.
England coach Brendon McCullum continuously expressed his worry for Stokes’ welfare in his press conference at the Oval earlier this week, but 300 miles away in Chester-le-Street where the country’s Test captain in absentia was playing on Friday, all the talk has been of him being ‘in good spirits’ or ‘same as ever.’
The few hundred hardy souls that sat through a mid-afternoon rain shower to watch the opening day of Durham’s top-of-the-table Division Two County Championship contest against Northamptonshire were left in no doubt as to his feelings.
Introduced to the attack as first change, the 35-year-old’s histrionics told their own story on what was an innings of two halves: wicketless until 4pm, half of the visitors’ line-up were dismantled thereafter.
On a sunny morning, Stokes’ warm-up included some one-to-one drills with the club’s second XI coach Scott Borthwick, one of his oldest friends in the game and a new neighbour in the garden village of Wynyard.
But his mood altered with the weather. Despite Durham throwing the new ball to prolific exponents, Ben Raine and Matthew Potts, two of the top five wicket-takers in the second tier, there had not been anything resembling a chance when Stokes began stretching out his hamstrings at mid-off at 11.34am.
Ben Stokes may have toiled upon his return to county action with Durham at Chester-Le-Street but there was no second guessing his positive state of mind
After some flinging of his arms to get loose, Durham’s No 38 was summoned as first change by his county captain Alex Lees to a rousing reception from those nestled under Chester-le-Street’s sprawling pavilion.
Bowling to the kind of field he himself sets for England, Stokes veered the ball in to Northamptonshire’s left-handed openers Ricardo Vasconcelos and Luke Procter from round the wicket, creating the first opportunity with just his fourth delivery.
Stokes watched as a flick off the pads went straight to leg gully at catchable height, but the ball somehow found its way out of the grasp of the giant Ben McKinney. Vasconcelos was on 13 at the time. Unlucky for some. Namely the 11 Durham players he subjected to a six-hour masterclass in how to play the short ball.
To emphasise no hard feelings, Stokes offered McKinney a low-five as their paths crossed at the end of the over.
Durham are always happy to have Stokes around, just not necessarily in these circumstances, and as England toiled against the New Zealanders, he was clearly giving everything to a county that adopted him at the age of 16.
Watched by Marcus North, the England selector dispatched from the Oval to assess his performance ahead of next week’s third Test at Trent Bridge, and the ECB’s elite bowling coach Neil Killeen, who happened to be on hand because he is working with Brydon Carse in his comeback from a right wrist injury.
Meanwhile Gus Atkinson, the other England player omitted from the Oval while a Cricket Regulator probe investigated the events around the breaking of a midnight curfew in the aftermath of a 115-run win over the Kiwis at Lord’s, taking the first of two wickets for Surrey in Cardiff.
The England captain was 300 miles north of his team-mates at the Oval, who were undergoing similar struggles
Frustration almost boiled over from the final ball of Stokes’ initial six-over burst when a full delivery angling into Procter struck pad in front of off-stump and appeared destined for middle, only for umpire James Tredwell, a former international colleague of Stokes, to ignore a theatrical appeal that concluded with the bowler collapsing onto his haunches and beating the palms of his hands on the turf.
This was Durham’s school day when 600 local pupils are admitted for free, but rain 20 minutes before their scheduled 3pm departure limited what they saw of the England all-rounder’s efforts to three post-lunch overs.
The seventh ball of that spell travelled close to the hip and gloves of Procter, on 53, and so convinced was Stokes of getting the breakthrough that he did not cull his arm-aloft celebration until he reached the batsman’s end.
When play resumed under floodlights at half past three, Vasconcelos turned Stokes’ pace against him, top-edging a second six over the sight screen and into the car park in what is the biggest of his three hundreds this season. Even the joy of the late wicket of George Bartlett was tempered by being sent for a random drugs test.
But there were lighter moments too, such as when he signed enthusiastically to Lees upon Nathan McSweeney’s demise to a leg-side strangle – suggesting either that he had proposed the introduction of Will Rhodes’ medium pace or flagged up the Australian as a candidate to be dismissed in such a manner.
It suggested that despite the travails of a day’s county cricket, Stokes was in a happy place. It has not always been this way over the past fortnight, with ECB sources insisting their welfare concerns in the days that followed the announcement of an inquiry into his conduct in the early hours of June 8 were genuine.
Such reactions have stuck in the craw up here in the north-east, though, with Durham’s chief executive Tim Bostock saying on Friday he was ‘bemused’ by the mental health references.
One thing everyone appears to agree on, though, now that the regulator appears to have concluded a one-match retrospective ban befits the midnight-busting crime is Bostock’s assertion that Stokes ‘should be playing for England.’ As he will be in Nottingham next week.
