Ben stokes

Ben Stokes was the hero of England’s victory in the 2019 World Cup final, but he has announced his ODI retirement. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian Ben Stokes was the hero of England’s victory in the 2019 World Cup final, but he has announced his ODI retirement. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian Ben Stokes, the hero of England’s World Cup final victory in 2019, has announced that the one-day international against South Africa at Durham on Tuesday will be his last. Stokes has decided that representing his country in all three formats is “just unsustainable for me” and he will concentrate on Twenty20s alongside his responsibilities as Test captain. Read more The game at his home ground on Tuesday will be his 105th in the format, in which he has scored 2,919 runs at an average of 39.44 and taken 74 wickets – putting the 31-year-old all‑rounder 19th on England’s all-time list for both runs scored and wickets taken. “This has been an incredibly tough decision to make,” Stokes said. “I have loved every minute of playing with my mates for England. Hard as this decision was to come to, it’s not as hard as dealing with the fact I can’t give my teammates 100% of myself in this format any more. The England shirt deserves nothing less from anyone who wears it. “Three formats are just unsustainable for me now. Not only do I feel that my body is letting me down because of the schedule and what is expected of us but I also feel that I am taking the place of another player who can ...

B en Stokes sits in the bathroom of a Nottingham hotel, unable to breathe. It is 6am, the morning after a match in the Hundred last year, and he is having a panic attack. It is not the first. He phones his agent, Neil Fairbrother, whose wife, Audrey, tries to calm him down. But all three know greater help is required. It’s fair to say this was not in the script; not for Stokes, the dirt-stained warrior who 18 months earlier had almost single-handedly Read more In an arresting early scene in Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes, which is released this week on Prime Video, a gaunt Stokes, eyes red and sunken, is seen biting his bottom lip nervously. He is two weeks into what became a four-month break from the sport and telling The attacks were striking indiscriminately, one time in a dry cleaners when he felt his heart was “sweating” and he had to escape and another while picking up his son from a children’s party. But the most significant came after that Hundred match at Trent Bridge. Stuart Broad, his teammate and close friend, bluntly puts it: “I could have seen him never playing again.” Twelve months later, Stokes says he is barely able to recognise himself on screen. He is in a brighter place, leading the Test team with the aggression that has underpinned his career and in an interview with the Guardian before the South Africa series, he outlines how this bleak period was overcome. Stokes began seeing a clinical psychologist and taking medication, both of which remain the...

I t was Joe Root who probably best summed up One certainly found Stokes at Eden Gardens six years ago, the last time he played a world final decked out in red. That fateful deciding over he bowled to Carlos Brathwaite saw four successive sixes soar into the night sky like fireworks, West Indies were crowned T20 world champions and a seemingly indomitable all-rounder was left on his haunches, utterly broken and inconsolable. But if those demons weren’t already exorcised at Lord’s in 2019, then on a tense evening in front of 80,000 spectators at the MCG, Stokes certainly whipped out the sacred relics and holy water. An unbeaten 52 from 49 balls during the clutch overs of a tense chase of 138 – remarkably his first half-century in T20 international cricket – guided Jos Buttler’s England to a deserved victory over Pakistan, and with it they became the first side to hold both the International Read more Not only did this turn England’s white-ball transformation since 2015 into a legacy of silverware for the current generation – a feat underlined by the absences of first-choice picks such as Jonny Bairstow, Jofra Archer, Mark Wood and Dawid Malan on the night – it also offered a reminder that the analytics which dominate cricket’s discourse only go so far. A satisfactory metric to rank the sheer gumption of players in pressure situations is yet to be devised but if it was then Stokes, to pinch a line from Brian Clough, would surely be in the top one. Striding out to the middle w...

A refreshingly honest film about an extraordinary cricketer. Directors Chris Grubb and Luke Mellows were allowed unprecedented access to Ben's life with interviews and insight by Sam Mendes. A refreshingly honest film about an extraordinary cricketer. Directors Chris Grubb and Luke Mellows were allowed unprecedented access to Ben's life with interviews and insight by Sam Mendes. A refreshingly honest film about an extraordinary cricketer. Directors Chris Grubb and Luke Mellows were allowed unprecedented access to Ben's life with interviews and insight by Sam Mendes.

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