Cricketers Have Beer, Shock: well, who knew! This wretched incident in some joint in Chelsea involving Ben Stokes and Gus Atkinson in a dust-up with some extremely large young Saracens rugby players is hardly world war three, but its ramifications are sending shudders through the cricket establishment. At the time of writing the full details are not entirely clear, though it seems that an England Cricket Board (ECB) security guard might have been accidentally thumped before a full-blown ruckus ensued.
Nothing good ever happens after midnight – a sentiment readers will doubtless be familiar with
Whether a well-known and widely admired 35-year-old international sportsman should have been out in a nightclub in the early hours of Monday morning is for others to judge. Stokes isn’t a kid any more. Quite why he hadn’t just headed back to his hotel after celebrating his team thrashing the Kiwis is a mystery. Though as everyone knows, you can’t get a taxi in London at night for love nor money.
Certainly nothing good ever happens after midnight, as both Stokes and the England manager Brendon McCullum have recently observed, and it’s a sentiment that many readers of this journal will doubtless be only too familiar with themselves. English cricket had even imposed a curfew for players following the boozy shenanigans during the catastrophic Ashes tour over the winter, and at the very least Stokes and Atkinson have breached that. Does that mean Stokes should be stripped of the -captaincy? I hope not, but we’ll see. There shouldn’t really need to be a curfew: these players are adults not teenagers, contrary to appearances sometimes.
This terrible mess is complicated by Stokes’s current form. He is a wonderful player who has held the England team together for years, with unforgettable performances with bat and ball: hard as nails and tough as a tugboat, as you would expect from the son of a Kiwi rugby league coach. Admirably, Stokes has also been open and frank about his issues with his own mental health – and alcohol – taking time out of the game when needed. But only a fool would fail to see that his form is looking rocky. His bowling is restricted by the appalling battering he has given his body, and his batting is sketchy. If he weren’t part of the leadership with McCullum and Rob Key, his place as a player would have been in doubt soon enough.
But he has been a fine captain, despite the debacle Down Under. And if he loses the captaincy or steps down, then who takes over? Harry Brook presumably, a fine player who has had his own issues with nightclubs, being carpeted (belatedly) by the ECB for having a bust-up with a club bouncer in Wellington, the night before a 50-over match last November. And dumping the England captaincy on Brook is quite an ask for a young man, however talented he is as a player. It’s a mess, no?
What is it with England cricket and its best all-rounders? After all neither Lord ‘Beefy’ Botham nor Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, great players both, could easily be confused for the Bishop of Bath and Wells in the course of their chequered careers. So will this be the last we see of Stokes? Please God, no.
So farewell then, James Milner, who has sadly decided to call time on his brilliant footballing career, every bit as inspiring as Messi’s or Ronaldo’s. Now 40, he made his debut at Elland Road 24 years ago where he became the Premier League’s youngest goalscorer. Since then he’s reached a record 658 Premier League appearances for Leeds, Newcastle, Villa, Manchester City, Liverpool and most lately Brighton. He won 61 England caps, three Premier League titles, and one Champions League. Above all, he was adored by fans and respected by teammates and managers. He learned Spanish to communicate more easily with players at Manchester City. He also wrote a very good memoir, called Ask a Footballer.
We won’t see his like again: a man playing continuously in the Premiership for 24 years, despite its relentless physicality and the lure of European football, the Saudi league and -America. A great man.
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