One job. That’s all England’s cricketers had as they celebrated Sunday’s first Test win over New Zealand at Lord’s. Be sensible. And that was it.
After the boozy escapades of the winter, Ben Stokes, their captain, and Gus Atkinson, who had just completed a five-wicket haul, have fallen at the first hurdle. There are times when observers of English cricket need only a brick wall against which to bang their heads. Now is such a moment.
The ECB’s investigation into exactly what went on in a nightclub not far from the team hotel in Kensington, west London, in the small hours of Monday morning is ongoing, but a few things are clear.
Stokes and Atkinson broke the team’s midnight curfew, laid down after the Ashes; drink was involved; and both men are unlikely to feature in the second Test at The Oval starting on June 17.
The fact that Stokes is set to hand the captain’s armband to Harry Brook, whose altercation with a nightclub bouncer in Wellington in November was swept under the carpet by the ECB until the final day of the Ashes in Sydney in January will be an irony lost on no one.
Even if Stokes is contrite – and we may hear from him in the coming days – it is hard to see how he now retains the authority to lead this team. Not after making his employers look so utterly foolish, and behaving as if Australia never happened. If he has captained England for the last time, this would be a ridiculous way to go.
Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson broke the team’s curfew just one match into the Test summer
At least the ECB have come clean this time, as they failed to do with Brook, putting out a statement inside 24 hours of whatever altercation took place. There are suggestions, too, that their crimes do not extend beyond the curfew and the drink, and that Stokes and Atkinson were not the catalysts for the incident. The police are not involved.
And yet. It’s hard to react with anything other than despair at the idea that Stokes, in his first Test since the Ashes, and with English cricket making every conceivable noise about a fresh chapter as they seek to reconnect with their public, thought it sensible to break the freshly minted rules.
After his infamous night out in Bristol nine years ago led to a punch-up and an appearance in court, Stokes himself observed that ‘nothing good happens after midnight’. And so here he is, testing out that theory once more.
Atkinson, too, was part of an Ashes tour whose trip to Noosa on the Sunshine Coast was regarded as the best-organised part of England’s trip. He, too, should have known better than to disregard the plans that were put in place partly to help convince an increasingly sceptical fanbase that Brendon McCullum’s dressing-room places professionalism before partying.
England denied all winter that their drinking culture has gone too far, yet what are we to conclude when, only 166 overs into their international summer, they are making the same old mistakes?
Atkinson took seven wickets across two innings at Lord’s but is now in hot water
Stokes, it’s true, has had a difficult few months, processing the Ashes disappointment and suffering a serious blow to his cheekbone in the nets. During the build-up to the Lord’s Test last week, it was the coach – not the captain – who did the heavy media lifting. When Stokes did front up, he wasn’t at his best.
But the answer to difficult times can never be to make life even more difficult. England had emerged from a tricky game on a tough pitch with the win they craved. Box ticked: now for The Oval. Instead, he and Atkinson have reopened barely healed wounds.
An hour or so after the conclusion of Sunday’s Test at Lord’s, Stokes told the media: ‘I probably won’t be real happy and smiling until I get up there and share a proper beer with the boys, because I have to come here and do this – no disrespect to you guys.’
No disrespect was taken. Clearly, though, we had missed the headline.
