Ben Stokes returns with a bang and overshadows glitzy Hundred launch
- PLUS: England relaxed over prospect of Marcus Trescothick taking interim charge for Test series against Pakistan
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The Hundred began to great fanfare in south London, but – not for the first time in his career – Ben Stokes ensured the story was elsewhere.
In his first outing as an ex-England cricketer, and his first 50-over game for Durham in 12 years, he followed nine tight overs with a typically characterful unbeaten 108 at Derby, securing a five-wicket win with five balls to spare.
That he battled cramp for much of the innings only added to the instant nostalgia for fans who spent his last few years as a Test cricketer fretting about which injury would strike next. Try as he might, he is incapable of doing anything quietly.
The Metro Bank One-Day Cup has become the poor relation of English cricket, scheduled to coincide with the Hundred in an admission by the ECB that four domestic competitions are one too many.
Yet it is this tournament – not the shiny new lucrative one – that will benefit from Stokes’s magnetism over the next few weeks.
His absence from the Hundred is partly a matter of taste. He played only five times for Northern Superchargers (now Sunrisers Leeds), scored 14 runs, took three wickets, suffered a panic attack in a Nottingham hotel, and tore a hamstring.
But it will not upset him that the ECB would have loved him to take part in their pet project. Stokes’s relationship with the people he calls ‘the suits’ was strained even before they disintegrated during the Rex Rooms saga that derailed the Test series against New Zealand.
By opting not to take part in the Hundred auction, he deprived the tournament of the one name guaranteed to cut through to the floating sports fan cherished by the administrators.
Durham will not be complaining. Watched by a modest crowd, his tidy seamers kept Derbyshire to 256 for nine, before he walked out amid the kind of crisis that had become familiar with England: 24 for two in the ninth over.
After a slow start, he went through the gears, lifting Anuj Dal for a straight six, then edging Nick Potts fine for four to bring up his half-century, and immediately collapsing to the ground in pain.
What followed was, by necessity, stand-and-deliver: two straight sixes off his old Test team-mate Shoaib Bashir, a cover-drive for four off Potts to reach 95, then a hobbled single off Ben Aitchison to bring up only his second century for Durham in all cricket since September 2014.
The bright lights will be duller now, and Stokes’s motivation will have to come from within. On this evidence, it remains very much alive.
England are increasingly relaxed about the prospect of Marcus Trescothick standing in as their interim Test coach for next month’s three-match series against Pakistan.
Conversations are ongoing with several candidates, after Andy Flower – the ECB’s No 1 choice – declined to throw his hat into the ring following the sacking of Brendon McCullum.
But the first Test against the Pakistanis starts at Headingley on August 19, giving the ECB barely a fortnight to make the appointment if they want the new man in place for a proper build-up to a series England simply have to win after harrowing defeats in Australia and at home by New Zealand.
The board have not yet ruled out naming McCullum’s permanent replacement in time for Headingley, with Justin Langer and Stephen Fleming the most prominent figures still in the mix.
But it is understood that the importance of the position, with the Ashes only a year away and a Test captain yet to be named after the retirement from international cricket of Ben Stokes, means the ECB would rather take their time picking the right candidate than rush into an appointment they may regret.
After the Pakistan series, England do not play another Test match until they take on South Africa at Johannesburg on December 17.
Trescothick, now 50, is regarded as a safe pair of hands, having been made England’s batting coach more than five years ago, and taken charge of the white-ball teams in the second half of 2024 for matches against Australia and in the West Indies after the sacking of Matthew Mott at the end of the T20 World Cup.
He said then that the experience had ‘given me a taster and a belief that I can go on to bigger things’. If the ECB err on the side of caution, he may get his chance sooner than he expected.
LAWRENCE BOOTH