The England cricket captain, Ben Stokes, was involved in an altercation at a night club in the early hours of Monday morning. Also present was his team mate, Gus Atkinson. The players were celebrating England’s victory over New Zealand in the first Test match of the summer. Full details of what exactly took place are yet to emerge but since they were clearly in breach of the team’s new midnight curfew, both players seem likely to miss the second match of the series which starts at the Oval on Wednesday next week.
The omission of Stokes and Atkinson for the second Test match should be viewed not as a crisis, but as a catalyst
The midnight curfew and a new code of conduct were put in place following a number of unfortunate off-field incidents during last winter’s disastrous tours of New Zealand and Australia. In the Test matches ‘down under’, England were comprehensively outplayed by a weakened Australian team, losing the series 4-1. Although it was entirely predictable , the architects of that Ashes debacle – Rob Key, the managing director, Brendan McCullum, the coach, and the captain Ben Stokes – were all confirmed in their posts.
Despite the poor performances of almost all the players on that tour, there have also been disappointingly few changes in the composition of the team. Our batsmen let us down time and again in Australia yet six of the seven who played in the final depressing defeat at Sydney also took the field last week against New Zealand; Zak Crawley was the only batsman to be dropped. It is a great pity that it’s so hard to get into or out of this England team; ‘Competition for places,’ as Sir Geoffrey Boycott has pointed out, ‘is the lifeblood of sport.’
