How England hierarchy lost the stomach to bring down Ben Stokes

Both Team Stokes and Team ECB have shifted their position during a two-week psychodrama that has left more questions than answers.

Stokes went from acting apologetic in WhatsApp groups with England’s management to threatening to retire when he felt cornered into resigning as captain, a job he said he “f------ loves” in an Instagram post in March this year. Having not even witnessed the Saracens academy player Totoa Auvaa taking a swing at Gus Atkinson, he felt the incident was blown out of all proportion by the ECB. He then dug a trench over the fact he had done nothing wrong because the curfew rules were so opaque. The Harry Brook precedent was in Stokes’s favour, too. Brook had committed a worse offence when he was punched by a bouncer in Wellington hours before he was due to captain England in an ODI but was fined, not suspended, and it was not made public.

The governing body travelled its own journey from fury over its captain breaking the rules he wanted imposed and expecting him to resign over the issue, to recognising those rules were not codified clearly enough. But as far as the ECB is concerned, it would not be in this position had Stokes gone to bed at an appropriate time.

There were also concerns that Stokes was frazzled by the job after four years as captain and a poor Ashes series. Senior figures at the ECB wondered if the pressure was making him act recklessly by going on a long drinking binge. “It’s not just about what’s happened on Sunday night,” Key said in his press conference. Stokes had, after all, been snappy and acted a little out of character before the Lord’s Test started.

Eventually it dawned on England they lacked a mandate to sack Stokes, and that public and pundit support was with the captain to carry on. England also lacked a replacement captain or all-rounder. That was hammered home in the defeat at the Oval, after which two of the three debutants were dropped from the squad.

They had been in a tricky position when it first emerged, because they could not afford for it to come out in the media, and were also fearful of the extent of the incident, especially in an age of camera phones and CCTV.

However, a situation that could have been resolved quickly with a swift investigation, an apology from the players, but with backing for Stokes from Key and McCullum, descended into a long bureaucratic process and a new chapter in the battle between Stokes and the ECB started.

When Michael Vaughan wrote a Telegraph Sport column on Sunday night headlined “Ben Stokes and the ECB can never trust each other again”, it was briefly reposted (then deleted) by Stokes’s account. Neil Fairbrother, Stokes’s agent and confidant, as well as a long-time associate of Vaughan, also reposted the column.

The Stokes-ECB relationship crumbled over the Bristol court case in 2018. After winning England the 2019 World Cup final, Stokes told Lord Patel, an ECB board member who had criticised his conduct in Bristol, to “f--- off” when he asked for a selfie, though Patel denied this happened.

It appeared for a while that Key had brokered peace. Wearing Nike trainers and golf gear, Key was not your typical ECB suit. His relationship with Stokes was strong and he became a buffer between the captain and those at the governing body he instinctively distrusts.

The cracks opened in Australia when Stokes was unhappy with McCullum and made that plain in his end-of-tour report. But Key backed McCullum to stay and both were empowered by the ECB to carry on to the end of the next Ashes series. The fragile peace lasted one Test match at Lord’s – which England won – and the subsequent fallout has plunged the relationship to a new low. Stokes was bemused by McCullum questioning his mental health and the face-to-face meeting with Key at Durham last week is believed to have been strained.

Stokes was advised by his long-term agent, Fairbrother, and Bob Mitchell, the veteran sports lawyer who is the general counsel at the Team England Player Partnership (TEPP) – the arm of the players’ union that looks after the international teams. This was the team that started to forensically pick apart England curfew regulations. The fine print and how they were communicated are key battlegrounds. Stokes helped write them, was initially apologetic, and eventually said he did not believe they covered the end of Test matches.

In his press conference three days after the incident, Key revealed that Atkinson was claiming not to know the curfew existed. Key gave the idea short shrift, saying players had been informed via TEPP (i.e. Mitchell) earlier this year about the new rules. The matter had also been discussed casually.

Many fans knew, because Key and others had spoken about it in the media, but Atkinson was not alone among players in claiming they did not know it existed or was in force. After the Ashes, with the Brook story fresh, England went to Sri Lanka and India for a white-ball tour and the T20 World Cup. Players on that tour were alerted to the curfew in the WhatsApp group, with a one-page document – seen by Telegraph Sport – outlining the new drinking rules: do not appear drunk in public; do not put anything on social media relating to alcohol; tell management where you are going after 9pm; and the midnight curfew. It also recommended players do not drink alcohol the night before and during matches because of its negative effect on performance, but there was no outright ban.

Atkinson was not on that tour, and there does not appear to have been a similar message or a formal sit-down to go through the rules at the Loughborough training camp before the Test summer. Some players were aware through media coverage, while others have changed their behaviour after the Australia and New Zealand tours.

Ultimately, all but two players were home before midnight after the Lord’s Test. However, McCullum was forced to admit, rather embarrassingly for him and Key, that things were not clearly spelt out enough. It is no real surprise that they were not: not only do the policies run against the instincts of Key and McCullum, but a lack of attention to detail has dogged the entire regime. As the players left Lord’s after the New Zealand win, insiders said they were reminded of McCullum’s trademark mantras of “don’t do anything that gets you in the papers” and “nothing good happens after midnight”, but not explicitly of their new bedtime.

There is even a suggestion, for instance, that England’s security guard, who ended up requiring stitches having been with the players at the Rex Rooms, was not certain if a curfew was in place. The ECB insists he did nothing wrong, and that his job was to stay with the players come what may, not usher them home at the right time.

McCullum maintained after the Oval Test that “perhaps whilst there may not have been a hard blueprint potentially, I mean like a hard factual [curfew], everyone knew what was going on”.

Dismissal would have been punishment that did not fit crime

It was telling that when the ECB issued a statement a couple of hours later, confirming the return of Stokes and Atkinson, the word “curfew” was absent. Instead, it pointed to “specific contractual obligations that require England players to at all times maintain the highest standards of conduct and act in the best interests of England cricket”. Initially, it was said that the Cricket Regulator would not be issuing a statement, because it had not found anything worth making a statement about. But at 2pm on Monday, a statement landed, confirming there was no “regulatory breach”. It also did not contain the word curfew. Both statements seemed victories for Stokes.

Leaving McCullum’s “I’m worried about Ben” press conference last Monday, it seemed impossible that he could be back, especially as captain, for Trent Bridge. In the 48 hours that followed, however, it became clear that the ECB could not keep him on the sidelines any longer: he wanted to return, his crime was not that bad, and the regulations were hazy.

The question now is how Stokes heals the rift between himself, McCullum and Key. One important figure could be Marcus North, the recently appointed national selector who was Durham’s director of cricket until he joined the ECB just over a month ago.

North could act as peacemaker and will be trusted by Stokes. McCullum, Stokes and Key just have to find a way to work together, but this incident has shown it takes very little for old sores to break open again.

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